Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) before the city council's Sept. 19 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Public commentary was dominated by the theme of public art, with several people weighing in against a proposed change to the city ordinance setting aside 1% of all capital improvement projects for public art. One of the changes would exclude the use of funds generated by the street/sidewalk repair tax from inclusion in the public art program. Those taxes are on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The deliberations on the public art ordinance provoked some overt politicking at the table between Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), which concluded with Kunselman challenging his council colleagues to direct the city attorney to write a formal legal opinion justifying the legal basis for the public art program.

The proposed changes to the public art ordinance were motivated in part by a desire to assure voters that their street/sidewalk repair millage would not instead be spent on public art. However, the council postponed the public art ordinance revision until its second meeting in November – after the vote on the millage. That’s also well after the planned dedication ceremony for the Dreiseitl water sculpture on Oct. 4 – a project paid for with public art funds.

At its Monday meeting, the council also postponed a vote on a resolution of intent expressing the council’s plan for spending the sidewalk/millage money.

The council also considered a proposal to cancel a 10-year contract signed last year with RecycleBank, a company that provides a coupon-based incentive program for city residents to participate in the city’s recycling program. The data from the first year of the contract was not convincing to councilmembers that the RecycleBank program was having a positive impact.

However, councilmembers voted instead to direct city staff to negotiate towards a revised contract that RecycleBank had offered, which reduces RecycleBank’s fee by one-third.

The council approved a settlement with its police union, retroactively to 2009. The new contract is similar to those that other city unions have also settled on – including no wage increases, and pension and health care plans that require a greater contribution from employees than in the past. The city still has two unions (firefighters and police command officers) with contracts yet to be settled. Contracts with those unions will now have to conform to the requirements of new state legislation, effective Sept. 15, that limits the amount that the city can contribute to the health care costs of its employees.

Also related to police staffing, the council authorized the use of federal money to hire five police officers, if the city is awarded a grant for which it has applied.

In another employment-related issue, the council gave final approval to a revision to its retirement system, which lengthens the vesting period to 10 years and computes the final average compensation (FAC) based on five years instead of three.

Land use and property rights were a recurring theme throughout the meeting. Those items included: approval of the sale of a strip of city-owned downtown land to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority; postponement of a request from a medical marijuana business for rezoning a parcel on South State Street; authorization of city staff to begin with the systematic annexation of township islands located within the city boundaries; and initiation of the process to levy a special assessment of Dexter Avenue property owners to fill in sidewalk gaps.

Items fitting the general category of economic development included a tax abatement for Picometrix, the setting of a tax abatement public hearing for Arbor Networks, and the expression of the council’s intent to establish a property assessed clean energy (PACE) district. The PACE program is a way for the city to offer loans to commercial property owners for the purpose of making energy improvements.

Among other items on the agenda, the council also passed a resolution calling on Gov. Rick Snyder not to sign legislation that would eliminate same-sex domestic partner benefits for public employees. 

Public Art Ordinance Revision

On the agenda was a resolution revise the city’s public art ordinance – a law that currently requires setting aside 1% of all capital improvement projects for the acquisition of public art.

Public Art: Background

The proposal, sponsored by Sabra Briere (Ward 1), would change the Percent for Art program by explicitly excluding sidewalk and street repair from projects that could be tapped to fund public art.

The timing of the ordinance change is related to two ballot proposals on which Ann Arbor residents will vote on Nov. 8: (1) renewal of a 2.0 mill tax to fund street repair; and (2) imposing a 0.125 mill tax to fund the repair of sidewalks – which is currently the responsibility of adjacent property owners.

Some councilmembers had previously understood the public art ordinance already to exclude replacement of sidewalk slabs from its definition of capital improvement projects.

But based on additional information from the city attorney’s office, the proposed ordinance revision was meant to spell that out explicitly [added language in italics]:

Capital improvement project means any construction or renovation of any public space or facility including buildings, parks, recreation areas, parking facilities, roads, highways, bridges, paths, sidewalks in locations where sidewalks do not already exist or as part of a larger capital improvement project, streetscape improvements and utilities. This definition includes only those projects designed to create a permanent improvement or betterment, and does not include projects that are primarily for the purpose of ordinary maintenance or repair. It does not include sidewalk crack repair, sidewalk cold-patching, sidewalk slab replacement, sidewalk leveling or sidewalk slab grinding.

The ordinance revision also would explicitly exclude the Percent for Art program from applying to any projects funded with money from the street repair millage. Another feature of the ordinance revision would exclude general fund money from being allocated to public art under the Percent for Art program.

The ordinance revision would also require that any money allocated for public art under the program be spent within three years, or be returned to its fund of origin.

On two previous occasions in the last two years (Dec. 21, 2009 and May 31, 2011), the council has considered but rejected a change to the public art ordinance that would have lowered the public art earmark from 1% to 0.5%. The city’s Percent for Art program was authorized by the council on Nov. 5, 2007. It is overseen by the city’s public art commission, with members nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council.

Public Art: Public Comment

Robert O’Neal introduced himself as a retired physician and a 50-year Ann Arbor citizen. He pointed to the history of public art in general and its positive impact. Why should a city like Ann Arbor not be a leader in public art? he asked. He hoped that the city council would not pull back from public art, when now is a time it can use the boost that public art can provide.

Connie Brown introduced herself as a business owner, a 30-year resident of Ann Arbor, and a member of the Ann Arbor public art commission (AAPAC). In times of economic stress, she said, you should not give up on your future. Public art attracts visitors and ensures art is available to all. She noted that AAPAC is charged with master planning and coordinating the effort and selecting artists. She pointed to the commission’s current activity: a call for artists for additional art for the Justice Center; the solicitation of statements of qualifications (SOQs) and a request for proposals (RFP) for Fuller Road Station; a mural project in Allmendinger Park; art in connection with the Stadium bridges project; the possibility of an art walk from the Argo canoe liveries to the greenway. She also pointed to the recently completed West Park sculpture. She asked the council to keep the funding for the public art program the way it is.

John Kotarski spoke in support of public art in Ann Arbor. He said that art creates a sense of place and identity. He asked if Ann Arbor could afford it. Yes, we can, he said. It makes good business sense, he said, citing a May 2009 article in Forbes. From the article:

[Public art] is also, strangely, economically viable, despite its often high price tag. New York’s Waterfalls cost about $15.5 million; they brought in, according to the Public Art Fund, $69 million for the city. “There are 1,400 cultural institutions in New York that [collectively] bring in more than $6 billion to the economy,” says [Susan K.] Freedman [president of the Public Art Fund in New York City]. “More than 40,000 people are employed in the arts, and the arts bring in 25 million annual visitors. I think there is clearly an economic impact.”

Kotarski said that some people would object that it’s not a good comparison, because New York is not Ann Arbor, but added, “I beg to differ.” Ann Arbor, he contended is a “creative hot spot” for the region and the nation. In addition to making good economic sense, it also makes good common sense, he said. We need to be creative, he continued. Every farmer knows not to sell seed corn, and creativity is our seed corn, he said. Public art reminds us that creativity matters. It’s hard to teach creativity, he allowed, but Google encourages its employees to spend 20% of their time working on something creative, not necessarily related to their specific duties. We need to plant more seeds of creativity, not less, he concluded.

Margaret Parker introduced herself as past chair of the public art commission. She began by saying that bad news is easy to find. She said that Ann Arbor is lucky because in 2008 it had started a savings account (the public art fund) by allotting 1% from all capital improvement projects for public art. From that “frugal plan” and a volunteer art commission, she said, public art projects are being realized in the city. She alluded to Connie Brown’s description of some of those projects.

Parker then ticked through some of the many steps that results in a long timeline for project. AAPAC analyzes priorities in the city’s capital improvement plan, and considers a diversity of projects (for example, large and small), and a diversity of artists, materials and styles. The commission considers which projects are going into construction each year and puts together a list. Each project needs a commissioner to champion it, Parker said. A task force gets set up for the selection process. It could take months before an artist signs a contract, and months more before construction is started.

Parker said that the council should not “dump funds” after three years – because that doesn’t acknowledge the time it takes to put a project together.

In support of the idea that the city’s public art program promotes collaboration, Parker mentioned that the Detroit Institute of Arts wants to partner with the city. The Ann Arbor Rotary Club also wants to work on beautifying traffic medians, and the University of Michigan wants to work with the city on Fuller Road Station.

Mark Tucker introduced himself as an art teacher at the University of Michigan. He told the council that with his students, they had started public art projects in the city – Festifools and Foolmoon. He noted that those projects don’t get any money from Percent for Art. He called the decision to establish a public art program one that was made by forward-thinking individuals. He said that 26 states and 90 municipalities have public art programs. Public art is a reminder that there’s a happy, creative, productive community here. It’s not a frivolous expense, he said, but a long-term investment.

Tucker asked rhetorically if Ann Arbor is a city that embraces art. He answered by pointing to the long histories of the art fairs, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Art Center, the University Musical Society, among others, as evidence that “we believe in the arts in this town.” However, he contended that “we’ve missed the boat in branding ourselves with the arts.” He contended that more visitors come to Ann Arbor due to the arts than all the sporting events combined. Yet if you’re a visitor or new resident, it’s not readily apparent that Ann Arbor embraces the arts, he contended. Public art makes Ann Arbor’s commitment to the arts visible. It might be cheaper to not make that commitment, he allowed, but we’ve made a decision to live in a city that has a pulse and a soul, and we’ve decided that living a full, interesting life is a goal worth seeking.

Jill McGinn introduced herself as a citizen of Ann Arbor for over 35 years. She said she supports the public art program. She told the council she teaches world history at Slauson Middle School. Part of the curriculum involves learning the characteristics of a civilization, and one of those is the arts. She described to the council how she tried to connect ancient pieces of art with modern art. To that end, she used a photo of a mosaic on one of the city’s parking structures. She asked the council to maintain “the meager penny on the dollar” for public art.

Public Art: Communications from Council

There are three slots for communications from councilmembers at various points during the meeting. The conversation on public art began in earnest during one of the early slots, before any of the substantive agenda items had been handled.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) led things off by reporting on his new assignment as an appointee to the public art commission, replacing Jeff Meyers, who resigned earlier this summer. Derezinski said he’d been to “one whole meeting” of AAPAC. He described the commissioners as incredibly dedicated people. He noted that both a former chair and the current chair of the commission [Margaret Parker and Marcia Chamberlin] were in the audience that night. He contended it’s a “fairly recent” program. [It was approved by the council in November of 2007.]

Derezinski said he was impressed with the commission’s willingness to collaborate. He’d met with members of the Arts Alliance and had an upcoming meeting with the Detroit Institute of Arts. He noted that AAPAC was looking at working with the Rotary Club to put some plantings and signage at the traffic median at the confluence of Washtenaw Avenue and Stadium Boulevard.

Derezinski then turned to other entrances into the city and the need to beautify the city – South State Street as well as North Main. The soul of the city is reflected in its values, Derezinski said. He asked rhetorically: “Do we stick do our guns?” Derezinski described now as a time when the public art program is just getting going. He said it takes a long time for art to be produced under the program.

Derezinski then adduced “Endymion” by the English poet John Keats [1795-1821], quoting its opening line: “A thing of beauty should be a joy forever.” [The passage is a sketch of a pastoral scene, in which the things of beauty are elements of nature – the sun, the moon, trees, sheep, and the like.]

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) responded to Derezinski’s comments by saying he appreciated all those who came to the meeting to support public art. But he then read aloud an email he’d received from a constituent about the use of dedicated millage funds, which called the practice of taking dedicated millage funds to pay for a different purpose “government corruption.” If this practice is not illegal, it should be, wrote Kunselman’s constituent. [The city's public art program uses a portion of millage funds designed for specific purposes – like street repair – for public art.]

Kunselman then went on to cite a Michigan Supreme Court case, South Haven v. Van Buren County board of commissioners, and read aloud from the opinion, which included in part:

However, a fundamental rule of statutory construction is that the Legislature did not intend to do a useless thing. If funds that voters approved for the purpose stated on the ballot could be redirected to another purpose without seeking new approval, there would be no reason for including the purpose on the ballot. Indeed, voters could be lulled into voting for a millage for a popular purpose, only to have the funds then used for something they may well have never approved. This is contrary to the General Property Tax Act.

By way of background, the South Haven v. Van Buren case involved a city suing a county over the disbursal of funds collected under a county road millage. The city did not have any county roads for which the millage could be used. The city filed suit, asking the court to force the county to “disgorge the funds” to the city based on a statutory formula, which the county should have used, absent any agreement between the city and the county for a different distribution. The court found that the county should have used the formula, but ruled that it was not the city, but rather the state attorney general who had the ability to enforce that statute. In other words, the legislation did not provide a specific cause of action for the city itself to take.

The passage cited by Kunselman is the court’s explanation for why the city was also not entitled to the funds on some other ground – the city was not a unit of government specified by the ballot language to receive funds from the millage. Voters across the county had not authorized the millage for city roads, but rather for county roads.

Public Art: Council Deliberations

When the actual agenda item came before the council, it was Sabra Briere (Ward 1) who led off the conversation – she had sponsored the amendment to the public art ordinance. Briere said the council could talk at length about public art and could try to be as eloquent as the members of AAPAC who spoke during public commentary. She told her colleagues that the proposed changes are not an attack on public art, but clarify what money can be used to fund it.

In providing an explanation for the thought behind the amendments, Briere explained that it was a surprise to her that taking tar and filling cracks in asphalt with it counts as a “capital improvement” under the current ordinance. Also, replacing a sidewalk slab is a “capital improvement,” under the language of the ordinance, she said, which was a surprise to her.

Briere said it seemed like an easy vote in 2007. [Though Briere was present at the Nov. 5, 2007 meeting, she was not elected to the council until the following day and did not make her first vote until the council's second meeting that month, on Nov. 19, 2007.] She had not been not aware of all the items that count as capital improvements, she said. She said she was dismayed that the funds accumulate for a long period of time. She could appreciate that the program is just getting started, but four years seems like a long time. She concluded her initial remarks by asking for her colleagues’ support on first reading. On the second reading, she said, the council could talk about it.

Responding to Briere’s contention that her amendment was not an attack on public art, Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) insisted that it is, in fact, a diminution of funds to public art and the effect is the same. He pointed to a number of projects in the pipeline and talked about how the entrances to the city can be improved in a way that related to the streets. He suggested that the program risked being eliminated in different ways – either through 1,000 cuts, or just eliminated outright. He insisted that four years is a short time. Before the council takes any action, a comprehensive look should be given to the program, he said, including the strictures on expenditures on the funds.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) stated that no one is looking to eliminate the program. But she allowed that she didn’t think the current draft of the ordinance was quite ready yet. She said she didn’t think the council could have a better version ready in two weeks, so she wanted to know when the planned work session on public art was scheduled. Derezinksi said the current thinking was for November. AAPAC could be ready for a report by then, he said. Higgins moved to postpone the vote until the second meeting of November. Higgins stated that during the work session, she would like the public to have an opportunity to talk to the council.

[Michigan's Open Meetings Act requires that public bodies allow the public to address them during meetings. However, Ann Arbor's city council does not allow for public comment during its work sessions, on the basis of the claim that these sessions are not "meetings" under the OMA statute. The American Civil Liberties Union has encouraged the inclusion of public commentary at Ann Arbor city council work sessions. Other entities, including the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, provide time for public commentary at work sessions.]

Briere noted that the public art ordinance revisions mention the street repair millage that’s on the ballot in November. She wanted to know if there were any legal implications to postponing past the election. City attorney Stephen Postema deferred to assistant city attorney Abigail Elias, saying that she has studied that issue. After some back-and-forth, Briere finally elicited from Elias that there was no legal problem with postponing the public art ordinance revisions.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said she couldn’t support a postponement. She wanted to see it withdrawn or voted down.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) said she concurred with Smith. She wanted the topic off the table. She said she needed to hear from AAPAC.

Margie Teall (Ward 4). In the background, front to back, are Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5).

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) said he was eager to hear from AAPAC and saw no harm in postponing. After the work session, he said, if it’s the council’s collective view to push it forward, then the council would push it forward; if not, they wouldn’t. That’s a perfectly useful process, he said.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he supported the postponement, because he generally supported approving an ordinance revision at first reading based on the habit and practice of advancing ordinance revisions to a second reading. However, he said he didn’t support the ordinance revisions.

Hohnke then said he wanted to encourage Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) to take some action on the topic that Kunselman has been “heatedly expounding on” at recent council meetings. Hohnke said it’s important that the public not have a misunderstanding about what the city is doing. Hohnke characterized the public art ordinance as articulating a policy on how the city builds the things that it chooses to build.

He admonished Kunselman that it’s not appropriate to make statements in order to “score points,” saying it’s important to take action on that which councilmembers espouse.

Kunselman responded to Hohnke by saying that he agreed with Hohnke’s point about action and said he would have co-sponsored the proposed ordinance revision with Briere, but he had been out of town. Kunselman said the council should reflect on the fact that for four years, the council had not received a city attorney opinion on the subject. He said he could not look back at old emails he might have received from the city attorney when he was a member of council from 2006-2008, because they were deleted during the year he was not on the council. [Kunselman voted for the public art ordinance in 2007. He lost the 2008 Democratic primary to Christopher Taylor, but won back his seat the following year by defeating Leigh Greden.]

Kunselman noted that the city attorney had said if the council directs him to do so, he would write an opinion and file it with the city clerk. But that’s not what the charter says, Kunselman noted. [A Chronicle column addressed this issue: "Getting Smarter About City Charter"] Kunselman noted that the public art ordinance had been approved under a previous city administration. He called on his council colleagues who supported public art to bring a resolution to give direction to the city attorney to write a formal opinion explaining the legal basis for the public art ordinance. He said he would not sponsor such a resolution himself.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) eventually interrupted Kunselman with a “point of order,” a motion that is permitted at all times in order to achieve enforcement of the parliamentary rules. The rule Rapundalo wanted enforced was the requirement that when a postponement has been moved, it’s the postponement that must be the subject of the deliberation. Kunselman responded to Rapundalo by pointing out that he was responding to Hohnke [who had also strayed somewhat from the topic of the postponement] and stated that he would support postponement.

Mayor John Hieftje said he still hears from residents that the public art ordinance takes away from the city’s ability to fund police and firefighters, but he insisted that it does not do that.

By way of background, police and fire protection is paid from the general fund. The public art ordinance reads as follows:

1:834. – Inclusion of public art as part of a capital improvement project; pooling of funds for public art; use of pooled funds.
(1) Funds for public art that are included as part of a capital improvement project financed from the city’s general fund may be used as part of that capital improvement project for the creation, purchase, production or other acquisition of art incorporated as a part of the capital improvement project, including art located on the site where the project is located.
(2) Funds for public art that are included as part of a capital improvement project financed from the city’s general fund may instead be pooled in a separate public art fund within the General Fund.

As a practical matter, general fund dollars are not typically spent directly on capital improvement projects. However, some revenue sources previously received by the general fund, like revenue from antenna rights, were made a part of the financing plan for construction of the police and courts facility, which was a project that contributed to the public art program.

Outcome: The council voted to postpone the public art ordinance revisions until Nov. 21. Dissenting were Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1).

Intent on Use of Street/Sidewalk Repair Tax

The council also considered a resolution of intent on the use of proceeds from a street/sidewalk repair millage that will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Voters will be asked to approve two separate proposals: (1) a 5-year renewal of a 2.0 mill tax to support street repair projects; and (2) a 0.125 mill tax to pay for sidewalk repair.

Use of Street/Sidewalk Repair Tax: Background

The resolution of intent would specify that the street repair millage will pay for the following activities: resurfacing or reconstruction of existing paved city streets and bridges, including on-street bicycle lanes and street intersections; construction of pedestrian refuge islands; reconstruction and construction of accessible street crossings and corner ramps; and preventive pavement maintenance (PPM) measures, including pavement crack sealing.

The resolution of intent would stipulate that sidewalk repairs inside the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority district will not be funded by the sidewalk repair millage, except when the sidewalks are adjacent to single- and two-family houses. Both inside and outside the DDA district (otherwise put, throughout the city), the sidewalk repair millage would be used only to pay for sidewalk repair adjacent to property on which the city levies a property tax.

One impact of that resolution of intent, if it’s adopted, is that the city’s sidewalk repair millage will not be used to pay for repairs to sidewalks adjacent to University of Michigan property.

Use of Street/Sidewalk Repair Tax: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) led off by saying the resolution was simply a clarification of the city’s goals for the millage, not a change of anything in the language on the ballot.

Homayoon Pirooz, head of project management for the city, answered questions about the resolution and the millage.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) noted that among the activities listed is construction of pedestrian islands, but not reconstruction. He wanted to know if that was intentional. Pirooz explained that the city had constructed the first pedestrian island in 1986, so it hasn’t been an issue, yet. Taylor pressed on, saying that he understood the items to be “exclusive” – that is, that the money can’t be used for anything else except what’s listed. Pirooz characterized the list as guidelines for activities the city used the money on, and with fact sheets the city had previously distributed.

Taylor responded that he would rather include flexibility in the list to devise solutions, without revising policy on the fly in the future. So he said he wanted to add “reconstruction” of pedestrian refuge islands.

Taylor asked why the information about the securing of grants from the federal surface transportation fund was included. Pirooz explained that the grants are not an extra expenditure, but rather expressed how the street reconstruction millage has allowed the city to secure those matching dollars. It’s significant for the public to understand that the 2.0 mill tax gives them more than 2.0 mills worth of funding for street repair, through the leveraging of federal and state dollars, Pirooz said.

In response to comments from Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Pirooz said that over the life of the millage in the last five years, the city had received an additional $27 million in outside funding, which includes around $17 million for the Stadium bridges reconstruction project.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) questioned the need for the resolution. Normally, she said, there’d simply be a “fact sheet.” Briere responded by saying that the council had expressed its intent in connection with the parks capital improvement and maintenance millage, when it was on the ballot in 2007 – the resolution answers questions about how the city would spend the money. It’s a benefit to the public and to the council to have a record of the goals of the millage, Briere said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) scrutinized “crack sealing” as an activity – he wanted to know if that has always been the city’s practice. Pirooz explained that the city has not typically used millage money for that, and has instead used Act 51 money. [Act 51 funds are revenues from the state, collected primarily from gas taxes.] The crack sealing is preventive maintenance, Pirooz said, when 3-4 years after a road is repaved, you see cracks due to natural oxidation of the asphalt. That’s the time to seal those cracks, he said. Although the city hasn’t done much crack sealing with street millage money, he said that in 2011, the city is using $80,000 for crack sealing. He called it a good investment. Contrasting with crack sealing is pothole repair. That’s “ordinary maintenance,” said Pirooz, and not paid out of millage funds.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) identified a redundant inclusion of the word “separately” in the list.

Taylor then asked what the rationale was for the restrictions on spending within the DDA for properties that are not single- or two-family houses. Pirooz noted that it’s part of the ballot language the council had approved in August. The rationale, he said, was that the DDA receives a share of the street repair millage [through its tax increment finance capture district] so it makes sense for the DDA to cover the costs within its geographic district.

Taylor then suggested that to the bullet points it might be useful to include language to allow more flexibility: “… may be used for street and bridge projects, including without limitation …”

Briere asked how Taylor’s suggestion would apply to how money was spent. Pirooz said it would not have any impact that he could think of that night. Briere said she was fine with Taylor’s suggested change.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) then expressed concern that the council was amending things on the fly, and wanted to see a complete version. She asked Pirooz if a postponement would interfere with the timing of the preparation of the city’s fact sheet. Priooz said it wouldn’t.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to postpone the resolution of intent on the use of the street/sidwalk millages.

RecycleBank Contract

On the council agenda was a resolution to end its 10-year contract with RecycleBank, a company that organizes a program to provide incentives to residents to set out their single-stream recycling carts for curbside collection. The contract has been in place for a year.

RecycleBank Contract: Background

A substitute resolution was eventually put forward directing the city administrator to negotiate a contract revision offered by RecycleBank that would reduce the per-household charge by about one-third, from $0.52 to $0.35 – which translates into a monthly payment reduction from $12,400 to $8,371. Under the new to-be-negotiated contract, if the tonnage of recyclables collected increases above current levels, RecycleBank could earn an additional $50 per ton, for each ton collected above existing levels. There would be a cap of $150,000 per year.

The resolution to cancel the contract had been postponed from the council’s Aug. 4 meeting. The cancellation resolution indicates termination would have given savings to the city of $149,167 per year on that contract. RecycleBank would have been entitled to $120,000 for the depreciated cost of equipment in recycling trucks as part of this program.

The impetus for canceling the contract had been based in part on skepticism that the first year’s worth of data really showed a measurable positive impact on recycling in Ann Arbor due purely to ReycleBank’s coupon incentives.

The interest in canceling the contract was also based in part on a desire by some councilmembers to find replacement revenue to fund a $107,042 annual increase in the contract with Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA), the company that the city hires to empty the curbside recycling carts. That increase was seen as necessary due to the financial stress under which RAA was operating, exacerbated in part by the lower-than-expected value of the contract with the city. The city deployed fewer curbside carts citywide than projected, and because RAA’s contract was based in part on the number of carts deployed, it received less revenue than had been forecast.

RecycleBank Contract: Public Comment

Atul Nanda, of RecycleBank, ticked through some points showing the positive impact of RecycleBank’s program. Among other items, he said that there’d been a 36% increase in recycling participation. Households that participate in the program have higher cart set-out rates than those that don’t participate. Last month, he said, residents had been able to order 2,400 rewards, the highest number of rewards since the program’s rollout. He pointed to avoided landfill disposal costs as a result of the program. He also reported that RecycleBank had received tremendous feedback from residents.

He then sketched out some of the terms of the offer that RecycleBank had made to reduce the cost of its contract with the city. That includes reducing RecycleBank’s per-household charge by about one-third, from $0.52 to $0.35 – which translates into a monthly payment reduction from $12,400 to $8,371. Also, RecycleBank would be willing to accept current recycling levels as a new baseline (680 pounds per household). If recycling levels increase beyond that, RecycleBank could earn an additional $50 per ton, for each ton collected above existing levels. There would be a cap of $150,000 per year.

RecycleBank Contract: Council Deliberations

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked city solid waste coordinator Tom McMurtrie to describe in more detail some of the options sent to the city, including the one that RecycleBank’s representative had characterized during public commentary.

McMurtrie went over the features of the RecycleBank proposal, which he described as a “hybrid” proposal from RecycleBank. On the hybrid approach, he said, the reduction of the fee by one-third would cut city costs by $50,000 per year. The incentivized system (of additional payments based on increased tonnages from current levels) would allow for RecycleBank to prove its worth, McMurtrie said, with a cap of $150,000. If recycling tonnage increased dramatically, the city wouldn’t see its costs increase beyond what they are today, McMurtrie said.

Another option was to discontinue RecycleBank for one collection day (Wednesday). On that option, on Oct. 1, RecycleBank would discontinue their coupon incentive program in the area served on that collection day. Then, after six months, the city would measure that collection day compared with the other four days. In April 2012, the city would look at the impact. That approach would provide some measurable data to show the effect of RecycleBank’s program.

On either option, McMurtrie said, the city could look at the contract at budget time and decide whether to cancel the contract or not.

Hohnke reviewed the points of the “hybrid” option and concluded that the downside was that if recycling tonnage did not increase, the city would continue to pay the contract – but he noted that the city is already doing that. McMurtrie agreed with that characterization, but noted that the city would continue to pay the contract at a lower rate – $100,000 annually compared to $150,000.

Hohnke confirmed that the city maintains the option of exiting the contract if funds aren’t available in the budget.

[The 10-year RecycleBank contract's termination clause includes language about terminating the contract based on availability of funds. To reduce legal risk, the city could decline to allocate the funds for the contract during its regular annual budgeting process. At Monday's meeting, the council revised its agenda to include a closed session just before deliberating on the RecycleBank contract, claiming an exception under the Open Meetings Act that allows a public body to consider written documents in a closed session if those documents are not required to be disclosed by statute.]

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) wanted some clarification about the $50/ton payment for additional tonnage. He wondered if the city’s “profit” on extra tons covered the payment to RecycleBank. McMurtrie explained that currently the city clears $75 on the tonnage as a commodity and avoids $25 in landfill disposal fees – so RecycleBank’s payment for increased tonnage would take half the $100 the city realized.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked if RecycleBank had had a chance to review the options. Which one does RecycleBank favor? he asked. Derezinski also wanted to know if there would be sufficient data by the end of the fiscal year to evaluate the impact of RecycleBank. McMurtrie explained that RecycleBank had a preference for the hybrid solution – it was RecycleBank that came up with it. As for the question of sufficient data, he said the city could get a good indication of what RecycleBank’s incentive program is doing in that time frame.

Briere noted it’s unusual to face three options for a single resolution. She said she’d be happy to see a substitute resolution on the floor with the direction to negotiate the hybrid contract. [From a parliamentary point of view, the wholesale substitution of an alternate resolution is an "amendment" to the original resolution.]

Briere then read aloud the resolution, which directed city staff to renegotiate the RecycleBank contract along the lines of the hybrid solution.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) said that the direction the city is going is to try to increase recycling. She invited a student who works with RecycleBank, promoting its services to residents, to the podium – the student told the council that they’d never received a negative response.

Briere noted that one of the city’s goals was eventually to roll out the RecycleBank program to multi-family housing. She wondered if there is a way to address that part of the proposal. McMurtrie suggested that this could come back at a future meeting. Briere ventured that extending the program to multi-family housing is already in the contract. McMurtrie clarified that the contract says RecycleBank would provide pricing to the city to expand the service to multi-family housing units.

Teall said she supported that idea and thought that RecycleBank programs would appeal to a greater degree to multi-family housing.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said she appreciated the additional time the council had spent on this issue. [She was alluding to the fact that it had been postponed from the council's Aug. 4 meeting.] Smith said she was happy the council didn’t respond with a knee-jerk reaction of eliminating the program. In hindsight, Smith said she wished the city had not rolled out the single-stream system with automated carts at roughly the same time as the RecycleBank incentive program. She said she still hears that people love the single-stream recycling, but she has not heard that people like RecycleBank.

Taylor said he’d support the hybrid option and thanked RecycleBank for its flexibility, even though the contract is suboptimal from the company’s point of view.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he’d support the hybrid option, but stressed that it’s important to keep their eye on the ball – namely, the next budget year. The city staff has indicated the solid waste fund will be challenged, he said, so it’s about fiscal responsibility as the city moves forward.

Hohnke concluded deliberations by saying that he took “gentle issue” with Smith’s description of the original resolution as a “knee-jerk reaction.” He said that after looking at the data, it wasn’t clear that the city was getting value out of that contract.

Outcome on the amendment and the full resolution: The council voted unanimously to renegotiate the RecycleBank contract.

Police Union Settlement

The council was asked to approve a new contract with the city’s police officers union, based on an agreement mandated by an arbitration panel’s award signed on Sept. 14, 2011.

The arbitration panel worked through the binding arbitration procedure for labor disputes in police and fire departments, which in Michigan is governed by Act 312 of 1969.

The new contract is retroactive for the period from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2013. In an email to The Chronicle, Tom Crawford, the city’s CFO, wrote that the panel’s determination does not include any liability for the city dating back to the start of the contract.

Highlights of the new deal include a redesigned health care plan, which offer options for health care contributions based on a calendar year. For single-person coverage, for example, the “low plan” would include no monthly premium but a $1,000 deductible. The “high plan” would include a 10% monthly contribution with a $300 deductible.

The new contract includes no across-the-board wage increases.

Pension contributions by employees would increase from 5% to 6% of pay on a pre-tax basis starting Jan. 1, 2012. Employees hired after Jan. 1, 2012 would not be vested in the pension program until 10 years, and their final average compensation (used to determine pension benefits) would be based on the last five years of service. Retirees would have an access-only type retiree health care plan with a retiree health care reimbursement account. Each employee would receive a one-time deposit of $500 in a health retirement account on Jan. 1, 2012.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), who chairs the city council’s labor committee, ticked through the highlights of the contract. He said he was sorry that 312 arbitration had to be used to get to that conclusion. If the city had had the agreement in place at budget time in May, he said, that would have saved a number of police positions that had to be laid off.

Rapundalo said that now six of eight city unions have settled contracts, so the city has slowly but surely made a lot of progress. He said he appreciated unions and employees stepping forward, but noted that some “rich contracts” had been put in place in the 1990s.

There’s still no contract with the firefighters or command officers union, Rapundalo said. Now that Gov. Rick Snyder has signed new labor legislation that restricts how much the city can contribute to employee health care, Rapundalo said the city would have a couple of options to discuss with those two unions: whether to take the 80/20 percentage – in which the city would pay for no more than 80% of an employee’s health care premiums – or the hard cap. Those unions had the opportunity to come on board before the legislation was signed, Rapundalo said, but didn’t.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the police union agreement.

Federal Grant Application to Fund Police

On the agenda was a resolution to authorize acceptance and appropriation of a federal grant, if it is eventually awarded to the city, to fund the hiring of additional police officers. The city submitted an application on May 24, 2011 to ensure a May 25 deadline was met.

The application was submitted for five officers at a total amount of $1,398,745. The grant would pay for the officers for three years.

The competitive grants were announced in May 2011 as part of the U.S. Dept. of Justice office of community oriented policing services (COPS).

At Monday’s council meeting, chief of police Barnett Jones described the features of the funding.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked what the effects of grant funding would be, were it to be awarded, on next year’s budget. Jones said there was no effect, because the grant doesn’t require a local match. Briere said in the past the city has not embraced this kind of grant because it comes with certain conditions. She ventured that there was a required commitment not to lay off officers hired under the program. Jones allowed that was true, and that a kind of “super-seniority” would need to be established for those officers, and that would need to be talked through with the union.

Jones said that a previous requirement associated with such grants, that officers hired under the program would need to be retained for a year after the grant funding ended, no longer existed. In response to a question from Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Jones said that the grant did not require maintaining any particular overall level of staffing.

Briere asked if laid-off officers could be brought back under the program. Jones said it was a matter of timing. If the grant were approved next week, then he’d use the funds to rehire the same officers who were laid off.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to authorize receipt of the grant, if it is awarded.

Retirement System Revision

The council considered a resolution to give final approval to an ordinance revision that increases the city’s pension vesting period for non-union employees hired after July 1, 2011 – from five years to 10 years. It also changes the final average compensation computation so that it’s based on the the last five years of employment, not the last three years.

Retirement System: Background

The ordinance change had been given initial approval at the council’s Sept. 6 meeting.

The preparation of the ordinance change came at the direction of the city council, which passed a resolution at its June 6, 2011 meeting asking the city administrator to bring forward ordinance revisions that for non-union employees would change health care benefits and aspects of the city’s pension plan.

Specifically, the June 6 resolution pointed to ordinance revisions that would base the final average contribution (FAC) for the pension system on the last five years of service, instead of the last three. Further, employees would be vested in the pension plan after 10 years instead of five. Finally, all new non-union hires would be provided with an access-only style health care plan, with the opportunity to buy into whatever plan active employees enjoy.

At its Aug. 4, 2011 meeting, the council gave final approval to an ordinance change that addressed the health care provision from the June 6 resolution. That ordinance change distinguishes between “subsidized retirees” and “non-subsidized retirees.” A non-subsidized retiree is someone who is hired or re-employed into a non-union position with the city on or after July 1, 2011. In their retirement, non-subsidized retirees will have access to health care they can pay for themselves, but it will not be subsidized by the city.

The city expects that when it reaches a point when all non-union employees have been hired under the revised pension plan, the city’s costs will be $230,000 less than they would be under the current plan.

Retirement System: Public Hearing

During the public hearing, only one person spoke. Thomas Partridge introduced himself as a recent candidate for 18th District state senate seat and as an advocate for senior citizens and public employees.

Partridge said he took exception to the mayor’s continuing to abrogate freedom of speech by making the equivalent of “shots across the bow” – it’d been done repeatedly, Partridge said, and he thought it was abhorrent. He said he opposed the passage of the ordinance because he didn’t think the council and the community had considered implications of going back on past promises. The council should think long and hard, he said, and postpone taking a vote. They should find a way to fully support the funding of pensions.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously, without discussion, to approve the revision to the retirement ordinance.

Land Sale to AATA

On Monday’s agenda was a resolution to authorize the sale of a six-foot-wide strip of city-owned downtown land to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. The strip forms the southwestern border of one of the parcels where the AATA’s Blake Transit Center is located. The $90,000 sale price of the 792-square-feet of land was determined to be the fair market value by an independent appraisal.

Land Sale to AATA: Background

The desire of the AATA to acquire the six-foot strip has been mentioned at several AATA board meetings during routine updates. It’s part of the AATA’s plan to reconstruct the BTC on the South Fifth Avenue side of the block; the BTC currently stands on the South Fourth Avenue side, with a canopy that stretches towards Fifth. The AATA hopes to finalize the design of the new transit center by the end of December 2011, with construction to start in early 2012.

Although she was an alternate speaker for public commentary reserved time at the start of the council meeting (there’s a limit of 10 speakers), Rita Mitchell did not have an opportunity to speak at that time. At The Chronicle’s request, she forwarded her prepared remarks. [.pdf of Mitchell's prepared remarks]

In Mitchell’s remarks, she acknowledges the fair market value approach used to establish the price of the land sale to AATA, but then asks:

Why not use the same approach for Fuller Road Park? Show us, the public, the business plan for the parking structure project that addresses the risks, costs and potential benefits of the project. Get an updated appraisal of the land, and propose its sale to the University, followed by the public vote on sale of park land that is required by our city charter.

Mitchell was referring to the site where the proposed Fuller Road Station – a joint city of Ann Arbor/UM parking structure, bus depot and possible train station – is planned.

Land Sale to AATA: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked what the impact would be for the future of the former YMCA (now city-owned) lot at Fifth and William, of which the strip of land was a part. The city’s chief financial officer, Tom Crawford, offered that he was not the most knowledgable person on that issue, but that the site to the south of the strip (the former Y lot) is maintained as buildable, with the zoning that’s currently on it. Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city, indicated that the allowable floor-area-ratio (FAR) goes down a very little amount, as a result of removing that strip of land. But from a configuration standpoint, she said, it shouldn’t have an impact.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked Crawford if the real estate appraisal was based on taking a proportional fraction of the $3.5 million the city had paid for the land, on which it is still making interest-only payments. Crawford stated that the city did not get an appraisal of the larger parcel in connection with the strip of land. Kunselman noted that the $90,000 proceeds are stipulated to go into the general fund, not to make payments on the interest for the property. Crawford noted that the council could direct finance staff to use the proceeds towards the interest payment, but that the interest payment has already been budgeted.

Mayor John Hieftje called the deal a good example of intergovernmental cooperation.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the sale of the land to the AATA.

Rezoning for Medical Marijuana

The council was asked to consider a resolution to rezone a property on State Street, so that it could be used as a medical marijuana dispensary.

Rezoning for Med Marijuana: Background

The owner of Treecity Health Collective, a dispensary at 1712 S. State, had requested that the city planning commission recommend the location be rezoned from O (office) to C1 (local business). The owner had also asked that the area plan requirement for that location be waived.

However, at their Aug. 16, 2011 meeting, planning commissioners recommended denial of the requests, based on a staff recommendation, stating that C1 zoning is not consistent with adjacent zoning, land uses and the city’s master plan.

And at their Sept. 19 meeting, councilmembers were hesitant to vote down the rezoning, and instead decided to delay their vote.

The Treecity Health Collective opened in 2010. This summer, the Ann Arbor city council approved amendments to the city’s zoning ordinances that prevent medical marijuana dispensaries from operating in office zoning districts – those changes were set to take effect on Aug. 22, 2011. Rather than relocate the dispensary, the business owner is asking for the zoning change. The property – located on the west side of State, south of Stimson – is owned by Francis Clark.

A recent court of appeals ruling has raised legal questions about the existence of dispensaries under Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Act. However, the Ann Arbor city council decided at its Sept. 6 meeting to proceed with the appointment of four out of the five members of its medical marijuana licensing board. At Monday’s meeting, council appointed the fifth member, Gene Ragland. That body was to meet for the first time on Sept. 21.

Rezoning for Medical Marijuana: Public Comment

Dori Edwards spoke in favor of rezoning the property. She described Treecity as a nonprofit medical marijuana collective. Though the land is zoned for office, she said it’s not a traditional office use. There’s a set of converted old houses along that stretch of South State – one is a palm reader, another is a masseuse. She noted that Treecity occupies the whole building, so no one else in the building can be disturbed by Treecity’s patients. She also told the council: “Our neighbors like us!”

Edwards noted that the planning commission had expressed concerns about “spot zoning” at its Aug. 16 meeting. But she reminded the city council that they had the discretion to do that and in fact the city already does that in the form of planned unit developments (PUDs). A PUD requires that the project be in the public interest, she noted, but she contended that allowing Treecity to continue is in the public interest.

Rezoning for Medical Marijuana: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) led off deliberations by alluding to another parcel rezoning request that will be coming to council – for a site where Biercamp Artisan Sausage & Jerky is located, across the street from Treecity. The purpose of the rezoning might differ, but the council has the same kind of issue to contemplate, she said. Briere suggested the council should think about the effect of rezoning that stretch of State Street collectively.

Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city, explained the planning commission’s unanimous recommendation against the rezoning request for Treecity’s parcel. The requested commercial zoning is inconsistent with the city’s master plan, Rampson explained – the site is recommended to be zoned as office. Zoning it as commercial would result in “spot zoning.”

Responding to a query from mayor John Hieftje, Rampson explained that the parcel where Biercamp is located includes an annexation request. The rezoning request won’t come to the council until it’s annexed into the city. The owners of Biercamp have requested a commercial zoning (C3), but the city planning commission has also recommended denial of that request, reported Rampson.

Hieftje asked about possible traffic issues. Rampson explained that rezoning to a more intense use allows for expansion of use. The planning commission is uncomfortable with rezoning, Rampson said, until the city moves forward with a corridor study of South State Street. [Earlier this year, plans for that study were put on hold amid concerns over its cost – even though the council had previously authorized funding for it as part of the annual budget.]

The planning commission had left the door open for expanding the commercial node at the intersection of Stimson and State, but not before revising the master plan after a study of the whole corridor. Responding to a query from Hieftje, Rampson explained that the light industrial zoning the Biercamp parcel will inherit from Ann Arbor Township would allow the sale of products produced on that site.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), who is the city council’s representative to the planning commission, noted that Rampson had underscored the fact that the corridor study was a factor. The challenges of the study would be exacerbated by having a big box store across the border, he said. [Derezinski was alluding to the planned construction of a Costco at the intersection of State and Ellsworth, in Pittsfield Township.] A similar issue with State Street had been confronted by a committee charged with the task of reevaluating the areas of the city zoned as R4C – the area has outgrown the zoning, Derezinski contended. We need a comprehensive look at the corridor, Derezinski said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked Rampson if “conditional rezoning” had been considered. Rampson said that in the early part of the process that came up as an option, but the request needs to come from the applicant – which they’d opted not to pursue. Asked why the applicant had not considered conditional rezoning, Rampson indicated that staff did not know. Also in response to Kunselman, Rampson said it would be possible to consider that as an option, but that the planning commission would need to review it, and see if the restrictions imposed as conditions would satisfy concerns about spot zoning, traffic, and use.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) asked what the implications are for “spot zoning,” given that such a rezoning would not change the current use that Treecity has for the property. Rampson responded by saying that the current use, as a medical marijuana business, was not authorized, so that’s not a measuring stick that can be used. Spot zoning, Rampson explained, is when a single parcel is not zoned as other surrounding similar properties. Responding to a query from Smith, Rampson said she felt like spot zoning the parcel could set a precedent citywide.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to postpone the decision on rezoning the 1712 S. State parcel.

Nominations/Appointments: Medical Marijuana

Ordinarily, nominations and appointments to boards and commissions are a two-step process, with nominations coming from the mayor at one meeting and confirmation at a subsequent council meeting.

In the case of the fifth member appointed to the medical marijuana licensing board, a physician, the mayor asked the council to make the appointment of Gene Ragland in a one-step process so the entire board could be seated for its meeting later in the week. The four other members had been previously appointed.

Outcome: Gene Ragland was unanimously approved as the fifth member to the medical marijuana licensing board.

Systematic Annexations from Townships to City

A resolution on the agenda directed the city staff to begin taking a strategic but systematic approach to annexing the 580 township islands from Ann Arbor, Pittsfield and Scio townships into the city of Ann Arbor.

Staff would begin with the annexation of properties owned by utility companies and publicly owned lands within the ultimate boundary area of the city. After that, the next priority for annexation are clusters of township islands. [.pdf of staff recommended analysis and strategy]

The council’s resolution calls for a report back to the council in January 2013 on progress with the annexation work.

The only person to speak at a public hearing on the issue was Thomas Partridge, who told the council he’d moved to the Ann Arbor area in the early 1990s. He said he didn’t think it’s in the interest of neighboring townships to give up valuable land using “ancient, unjust annexation laws” that should have long ago been replaced. He called it a part of the “bullying mindset” that is all-too prevalent in the state of Michigan. He said he’d not heard one word justifying the annexation action. He said the council had also not heard from the townships. If annexation happens, it should be done through the merging of local units into one regional government, he said.

During the communications time immediately following the public hearings, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that the council had just heard Partridge discuss annexation of clusters – some of which have houses on them. She said that she could not speak to the concerns of each township supervisor. However, she reported that she had spoken to Ann Arbor Township’s supervisor [Michael Moran]. She was told they’d been prepared for years for these annexations and had based their budgets on that expectation. So it doesn’t cause a significant hardship, she concluded. Briere allowed that she couldn’t say that the same opinion is held by all township supervisors, because she had not met with them all.

When the item came up, mayor John Hieftje echoed the sentiment that Briere had previously expressed, saying the annexations have been planned for a decade. He described the townships as happy, because they don’t have to provide services across the boundary into Ann Arbor.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to give staff direction to begin systematic annexation of township islands within the city.

Dexter Avenue Special Sidewalk Assessment

Before the council was a resolution to start the process for a special assessment on property owners along a stretch of Dexter Avenue, in order provide the required 20% local funding component for sidewalk, curb and gutter improvements. The other 80% of the project would be paid with federal funds.

There are several gaps in the sidewalks along that stretch [photo]. An administrative hearing for residents is planned for Oct. 3.

This first step by the council essentially directs the city administrator to prepare plans and provide an estimate of the cost. The project is part of the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP). A neighborhood meeting was held on the topic in June 2011.

Next steps, with their expected timing, include: Sept. 20 – mail administrative hearing invitation to residents; Oct. 3 – administrative hearing with residents; Nov. 10 – council approval of resolutions specifying costs to property owners, and a public hearing date; Dec. 5 – public hearing and a council vote on the special assessment.

During deliberations, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that the resolution is a good reminder that special assessments are how the city builds new sidewalks – it’s not done that often. She observed it’s not paid for with millage dollars that could be approved in November. The sidewalk repair millage dollars would be restricted to existing sidewalks. Dealing with gaps in the sidewalk are a challenge, she said, and a property assessment is a good solution.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) noted that this work is in preparation of the reconstruction of Dexter Avenue between Maple and Huron.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), noting the portion of the project to be paid by the Michigan Dept. of Transportation, observed that a lot of the city’s sidewalk gaps are in neighborhoods. He wanted to know if those gaps were eligible for such MDOT funding. The answer Kunselman got from Homayoon Pirooz, head of project management for the city, was basically no.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) reported that there’d been good turnout at the meetings with the community on this project in the spring, and those meetings went well. He said it might be a hard pill for people to swallow, but 80% of the cost is being picked up, which would be a “salve for their pocketbooks.”

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to start the process for the Dexter Avenue special assessment.

Tax Abatements: Picometrix, Arbor Networks

On the agenda were resolutions to approve one tax abatement and to set a public hearing for another.

The resolution on a tax abatement was for Picometrix LLC, located at 2925 Boardwalk in Ann Arbor. Picometrix is a supplier of high-speed optical receivers.

The five-year abatement would apply to $2,434,882 worth of personal property that Picometrix is acquiring. From the application for abatement: “Due to the projected increase in production volume, the company will need to purchase assets to maximize production and support added staffing.”

The list of personal property included in the application ranges from garden-variety desks and cubicles to digital oscilloscopes and laser beam profilers. The abatement will reduce the company’s annual tax bill for the new equipment by about $16,500 annually. The new personal property is expected to generate approximately $20,700 in property taxes for each year during the abatement period, according to the city staff memo accompanying the resolution.

The industrial development district in which the Picometrix tax abatement is sought was established in 2006. The public hearing on the request from Picometrix was held at the council’s July 18 meeting. Only one person spoke at the hearing.

Also at its Sept. 19 meeting, a separate resolution set a hearing for a tax abatement for Arbor Networks. That hearing will take place at the city council’s meeting on Oct. 17, 2011. Arbor Networks is a computer network security company. The abatement would be on $883,527 in real property and $7,790,454 in personal property. Under the requested abatement, the tax bill on the additional real and personal property for Arbor Networks would be reduced by about $84,700 annually for five years. The new building improvements and personal property investments are estimated to generate about $107,800 in property taxes for each year during the five-year abatement period.

During the brief deliberations, Stephen Kunsleman (Ward 3) wanted to know how previous abatements had worked out with Picometrix. The city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, told Kunselman it had worked out well – they’ve met their requirements. Kunselman noted he’d had a tour of the facility and said it’s very impressive.

Outcome: On separate votes, the council unanimously approved the Picometrix tax abatement and the setting of a public hearing on Arbor Network’s abatement request.

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program

The council considered a resolution to formally express its intent to establish an Energy Financing District and a Property Assessed Clean Energy program (PACE). The resolution also included setting a public hearing for the council’s first meeting next month, on Oct. 3, 2011.

The resolution of intent refers to a report, which describes in detail the project and property eligibility for PACE, as well as project size, application process, and financing, among other elements.

At its March 7, 2011 meeting, the council had voted to set up a $432,800 loan loss reserve fund to support the city’s planned PACE program. The money for the fund comes from an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) awarded to the city by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Through its PACE program, the city of Ann Arbor will help commercial property owners finance energy improvements through voluntary special assessments. By establishing a loan loss pool, the city can reduce interest rates for participating property owners by covering a portion of delinquent or defaulted payments. [Some previous Chronicle coverage of PACE: "Special District Might Fund Energy Program"]

After the public hearing, the city council would still need to pass a resolution establishing the program.

During deliberations, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, to sketch out how the program works. Naud also brought Wendy Barrott to the podium, who is coordinating the PACE program for the city. One point that was highlighted was the fact that the state enabling legislation currently covers only commercial property, but that includes multi-family housing.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that she was already fielding questions about when property owners can apply, and she drew out the fact that on Oct. 3 after the public hearing, the council can establish the program. At that point the city can accept applications from commercial property owners who already have an energy assessment in place.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to pass the resolution of intent to establish a PACE program.

Same-Sex Benefits

On the agenda was a resolution urging Gov. Rick Snyder not to sign House bills 4770 and 4771, which prohibit public employers from providing certain benefits to public employees and which will eliminate benefits for domestic partners of the same gender.

Steve Powers, the new city administrator, shares a laugh with Sandi Smith (Ward 1) before the Sept. 19 meeting.

The language of the resolution notes that a number of public entities provide health care benefits for domestic partners of either gender – including the state of Michigan, public universities, as well as city and county governments, and public school districts.

The resolution was sponsored by Sandi Smith (Ward 1).

Jeff Irwin – a Democrat who represents state House District 53, which includes most of Ann Arbor – voted against the bills and argued on the House floor against them: “If this becomes law, we will have two employees working side by side with the same qualifications and experience and the employee living in a traditional family will receive significantly greater compensation. That is clearly unfair and discriminatory.”

The council resolution reaffirmed Ann Arbor’s “commitment to a diverse and accepting culture.”

Smith led off the brief deliberations by saying that Ann Arbor has always been a leader in human rights. She noted that many public employers provided benefits to domestic partners. She cast it as an economic issue – it’s about attracting talent to Michigan, she said. If Michigan puts forward that it’s intolerant, Michigan will not be able to attract the best and the brightest.

Mayor John Hieftje said he appreciated Smith bringing it forward. She’d done a good job of citing the reasons, he said.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to urge Gov. Rick Snyder not to sign the two bills affecting same-sex benefits.

Cleaning Contract

The council was asked to authorize a $580,680 cleaning contract with Kristel Cleaning Inc. for janitorial service at the city’s municipal center, Wheeler Service Center, the water treatment plant, the Ann Arbor Senior Center and various smaller locations.

The contract had been postponed from the council’s Sept. 6 meeting, when Sandi Smith (Ward 1) had raised questions about the need for a 5-day cleaning schedule for the new municipal building and city hall.

At the Sept. 6 meeting, Smith had wanted to understand what factored into the frequency of cleaning: Does it depend on the number of public visitors or the number of people who work there? What are the problems with a 3-day schedule? Alluding to the fact that the city had dropped down to a 3-day schedule from a 5-day schedule, mayor John Hieftje suggested that it would be appropriate to ask if the city is spending more for cleaning now than three years ago. Interim city administrator Tom Crawford had said “fruit flies and critters like that” were an example of some problems with the 3-day schedule.

The council did not deliberate on the resolution at its Sept. 19 meeting.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the cleaning contract.

Thank You to Interim City Administrator

The council acted on a resolution to recognize the service of the city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, who served as interim city administrator from the end of April until Sept. 15.

New city administrator Steve Powers attended his first council meeting. He’d attended a work session the previous week, though he had not officially assumed the post at that time.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) introduced the resolution, added late to the agenda. She said Crawford would be given a $10,000 bonus in recognition of his service. [Crawford was selected from internal candidates who applied to be interim administrator.]

In accepting the acknowledgment and the ovation he received from the council, Crawford’s comments were brief, saying that the work that gets done is done by city staff.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve Crawford’s bonus.

Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA) Board Membership

On Monday’s agenda was a resolution to amend the agreement between Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti so that a councilmember who serves on the local development finance authority (LDFA) board will not serve on that board past the time they are a member of the city council.

Under the change to the agreement, the city council representative to the LDFA board would cease to be a member of the LDFA immediately when that person ceases to be a member of the city council. The change addresses the fact that appointments to the LDFA board are for four years, while councilmembers are elected to just two-year terms on the council.

To take effect, the change must still be approved by the Ypsilanti city council, and then the LDFA board must change its bylaws to be consistent with the agreement.

The change was previously discussed at the council’s July 18, 2011 meeting, when Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) was appointed by his council colleagues to a four-year term on the LDFA. Rapundalo, a Democrat, faces a challenge in the Nov. 8 general election from Jane Lumm, who is running as an independent. Lumm has assembled a long list of endorsements from prominent Democrats and Republicans.

The LDFA is funded through tax-increment financing (TIF) in a manner similar to the way the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is supported. A TIF district allows authorities like the LDFA and the DDA to “capture” some of the property taxes that are levied by other municipal entities in the district. The LDFA contracts with the economic development agency Ann Arbor SPARK for various business development services. [For more background on the LDFA, see Chronicle coverage: "Budget Round 5: Economic Development"]

Rapundalo explained that the bylaws for LDFA board appointments, specifically with respect to councilmembers, are inconsistent with the agreement. But the agreement between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor has to be amended first.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) wanted to know when the Ypsilanti city council was meeting to decide the issue. At their Oct. 4 meeting, Rapundalo said.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the change in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor LDFA agreement.

Leaf Trucks

In his first communication as city administrator, delivered earlier in the meeting, Steve Powers had ticked through the various options available to residents for leaf pickup – carts, bags, or mulching in place.

Steve Powers, Ann Arbor city administrator.

The council was asked to consider a resolution to rent eight rear-load trucks for $138,000 for use in connection with fall leaf collection.

Sue McCormick, public services area administrator, answered some questions from councilmembers about the truck rental.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that the city no longer picks up leaves by asking people to rake them into the street, and instead requires residents to use carts or bags. McCormick allowed that Briere was right – the trucks to be rented simply supplement the city’s regular trucks, and reduce the number of times that trucks would need to be emptied as they cover their routes. They supplement the fleet, she explained.

In response to a query form Sandi Smith (Ward 1), McCormick said that when the city budgeted for 2011, it expected to save $104,000 by moving to containerized leaf collection. In fact, there’d been a $200,000 reduction. She cautioned that the figure was unaudited. For the 2012 fiscal year, the city is estimating $150,000 in savings, she said. There would be a slight increase in truck rental costs, she said, but it’s still expected to be more efficient than bulk leaf collection.

Communications and Comment

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

Comm/Comm: City Council Liaison to Housing Commission

During council communications at the conclusion of the meeting, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) elicited from mayor John Hieftje that Hieftje had decided not to accept Kunselman’s offer, made at the council’s Sept. 6 meeting, to serve as the city council’s liaison to the Ann Arbor Housing Commission.

The post of council liaison to the commission became vacant when it was announced at the council’s Aug. 4 meeting that Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) had volunteered to replace Jeff Meyers on the city’s public art commission, if some other councilmember could be found to replace Derezinski as housing commission liaison.

Hieftje announced at the Sept. 19 meeting that two councilmembers had volunteered to be the housing commission liaison: Kunselman and Margie Teall (Ward 4). Hieftje said he’d be bringing forward Teall’s name as the nomination at the council’s next meeting.

Were Kunselman appointed as council liaison to the housing commission board, he would have been working closely with a body that now includes Leigh Greden, whom Kunselman defeated in the 2009 Ward 3 Democratic Party primary election. Teall was one of Greden’s strongest allies on the council during the time that he served.

Comm/Comm: Welcome to New Administrator

Mayor John Hieftje welcomed new administrator Steve Powers to his first council meeting.

Powers thanked the council for its confidence in him. He said he was excited to be living in Ann Arbor. He was eager to join the team and to move the community forward.

Comm/Comm: Video Surveillance Ordinance

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) has told her colleagues at previous meetings that she expected a video surveillance ordinance to be brought forward soon. She told them there’d been some additional concerns about homeland security issues that had delayed it. She thought it would be ready for the council’s next meeting and the text would be available well before the next meeting.

Comm/Comm: Audit Committee

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he was a member of the audit committee and there had not been a meeting held the previous year, but that he would try to meet with the auditor to discuss the FY 2011 audit this year. [Other members of the council's audit committee include: Carsten Hohnke (Ward 3), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), Sandi Smith (Ward 1) and Margie Teall (Ward 4).]

Rapundalo responded to Kunselman’s point on the audit and the apparent lack of a meeting. He said the decision not to call a meeting of the audit committee was based on the fact that there was little to discuss in the report and that instead, the audit came to the full council, which accepted it and passed it. There was no need to meet, he said. Rapundalo said he was awaiting the FY 2011 audit to see if it merits a meeting of the audit committee or if it can go straight to the full council.

Comm/Comm: A2OpenBook

At the Sept. 19 meeting, CFO Tom Crawford announced the launch of A2OpenBook, an online tool that residents can use to follow the city’s revenues and expenditures. The information on the system is refreshed daily from the city’s LOGOS financial system.

The online system allows users to look at expenses and revenues by service area, by fund and by expense type. The information is downloadable in MS Excel format so that users can search for and manipulate data as desired. Information is available for expenses beginning July 1, 2010 – data is updated daily.

There’s a possibility that data for P-Cards – the city’s purchasing cards – might be added in a second phase of the project.

A similar system – called OpenBook – was launched a year ago by Washtenaw County government.

Comm/Comm: Public Speaking Time

Michael Benson introduced himself as a Ward 2 resident. He noted that councilmembers might also recognize him as president of the University of Michigan graduate student body, but he said that’s not why he was there.

Benson led off by thanking councilmembers for their service. He pointed out that the council would soon be reviewing its rules. [This is a regular activity each November after the new edition of the city council is elected.] With respect to public speaking turns, he asked that the council enforce the current rules. Specifically, in selecting speakers for the 10 slots available at the start of a meeting, people who are speaking on agenda items are supposed to be given priority over those who are not speaking directly to some agenda item.

Benson also asked the council to consider looking at the topic of diversity. The whole point of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act is to let people participate, he said. Benson also noted that some people speak on similar issues over and over again – it might be useful to give preference to people who have not spoken at an immediately preceding meeting.

Comm/Comm: Sidewalks, Line-of-Sight

Kathy Griswold began by thanking the city for its cooperation with the Kiwanis Club – the council had agreed at its Sept. 6 meeting to lease part of the building at 415 W. Washington to Kiwanis for its warehouse sale.

Alluding to the Dexter Avenue sidewalk assessment the council had voted on, Griswold noted that for a section of sidewalk near King Elementary that would need to be installed to allow moving a crosswalk to a four-way stop intersection, neighbors had been willing to pay for it. She pointed to an ongoing $5,400 expense for a crossing guard that could be eliminated if the crosswalk were moved.

Griswold pointed to a problematic area located off Stone School road where branches are obscuring sight lines. On Sept. 9, a woman pulled out and was hit by someone travelling southbound, Griwold reported. She said she sent photos to the police chief. We shouldn’t have to wait for an accident, she said. There needs to be adequate site distance.

Comm/Comm: Recall Snyder

Thomas Partridge introduced himself as an advocate for people who can’t attend the meetings. He called on people to support the recall of Gov. Rick Snyder and other Republican members of the legislature. He called on everyone to protect the most vulnerable citizens – ethical access to law enforcement and affordable transportation, housing and education and health care. Things are going downhill under Gov. Snyder, and under the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, he contended. He asked people to re-examine their political viewpoints and to unite everyone under a new governor.

Later, during public comment time at the end of the meeting, Partridge reiterated complaints he’s made before the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board about quality of service provided by AATA. Responses from the AATA are too often surly and resentful, he said.

Comm/Comm: Energy Farms

Kermit Schlansker called for a variety of approaches to deal with the diminishing resources caused by increased affluence. He told the council that solutions needed to be found for feeding and housing the poor. He described a wide range of initiatives, including the planting of nut trees in city parks and digging cisterns. He called for the creation of energy farms that would include biomass digesters, solar and wind energy generation.

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

Next council meeting: Oct. 3, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 301 E. Huron. [confirm date]

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A recycling bin used in the city of Ann Arbor. Some county commissioners would prefer that the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority partner with Ann Arbor, rather than build its own single-stream recycling facility.

The longest discussion focused on a proposal by the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority, which is hoping to build a $3.2 million facility to handle single-stream recycling for communities on the county’s west side. The 20-year-old entity would like the county to issue $2.7 million in bonds, backed by the county’s full faith and credit, to be repaid through special assessments on households in participating communities, including the city of Chelsea.

Commissioners wanted more details on the project’s business plan and projected budget before they consider a formal proposal, likely in early September. Several commissioners also questioned why the WWRA wasn’t planning to partner with the Ann Arbor recycling facility. Commissioner Rob Turner, whose district covers much of western Washtenaw and who supports this effort, voiced some frustration that recent bonding for drain projects in Ann Arbor hadn’t received the same level of scrutiny from his fellow commissioners.

The skatepark presentation was relatively brief, and commissioners generally expressed support for the project. Commissioner Rolland Sizemore Jr. felt the organizers were too Ann Arbor-centric, however. He reminded them that the county parks & recreation commission had committed $400,000 in matching funds for the project, and that organizers should consider fundraising and selling skatepark merchandise in other parts of the county, not just Ann Arbor.

The board also learned some details on a proposed transfer of about a half-dozen employees from the county payroll to the WCHO, as part of a restructuring aimed at limiting the county’s financial liabilities. The WCHO is an entity that receives state and federal funding to provide services for people with serious mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse disorders. At this point, WCHO “leases” its employees from the county, and contracts for services through the county’s community support and treatment services (CSTS) department, which employs about 300 people. A CSTS employee spoke during public commentary, complaining that the staff hasn’t been adequately informed about these proposed changes.

And though commissioner Ronnie Peterson, at a June 28 agenda briefing, had advocated strongly for reordering the working session’s agenda in order to give more time to the WCHO discussion, he did not attend the meeting.

Ann Arbor Skatepark

Scott Rosencrans, a board member for Friends of the Ann Arbor Skatepark (FOAAS), gave a presentation to commissioners about progress the group has made toward their goal of building a skatepark in Veterans Memorial Park, on Ann Arbor’s west side. Other FOAAS board members – including Trevor Staples and Diane Kern – attended the meeting but did not individually address the county board.

The presentation was similar to one Rosencrans gave at the Ann Arbor city council’s June 20, 2011 meeting. He began by telling commissioners about merchandise sales that support the skatepark: T-shirts, coffee mugs and skateboard decks, which are sold by several local merchants: Acme Mercantile, Launch Board Shop, Play It Again Sports, Vault of Midnight, Roos Roast and Produce Station.

In 2011, FOAAS is focusing on two areas, Rosencrans said: skatepark safety, and accessibility for the physically challenged. He cited a Consumer Product Safety Commission study that showed skateboarding as being safer than basketball, baseball and soccer, based on the number of injuries per 100,000 participants.

FOAAS has done outreach on the issue too, Rosencrans said. They’ve visited and talked with organizers of the Riley Skatepark in Farmington Hills, which opened in 2009 and is similar in size and population to the Ann Arbor project. Anecdotally, he said, the experience at Riley reflects the injury statistics reported by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He noted that the highest injury rates occur when there’s physical contact between participants. Contact between skateboarders is an anomaly, not part of the sport, he noted.

FOAAS is also working hard to make the skatepark design accessible to people with disabilities, Rosencrans said, and they’ve sought input from that community. In March, FOAAS made a formal presentation to the Ann Arbor Commission on Disability Issues, and went on a field trip to the Riley Skatepark with members of that group. The result was a resolution of support from the commission for the skatepark, he said.

Rosencrans also reviewed why Veterans Memorial Park was chosen as a location. Among the reasons he cited: (1) it’s located between two high schools (Pioneer and Skyline), and on bus lines; (2) it’s near two major highways – I-94 and M-14 – to accommodate skaters from other parts of the county; (3) there’s lots of parking; (4) and it’s near emergency health facilities, ”though we know those won’t be used very often,” he joked.

In characterizing the importance of a skatepark, Rosencrans noted it would serve about 5,000-7,000 people, mostly kids, throughout the county. A survey for the update of the Ann Arbor parks, recreation and open space (PROS) plan found that skateboarding was more popular than hockey, volleyball and rowing, and had roughly the same level of participation as sports like baseball, basketball and ultimate Frisbee, among others.

Skateparks are also important for economic development, he said, citing the potential to draw visitors from three states, and beyond. Rosencrans also noted the growing trend of citizen participation as spearheading these kinds of public projects – examples of that, he said, include local dog parks, and involvement when public amenities like the city’s golf courses, Mack Pool or the senior center have been threatened with closure. He also mentioned the trend of private philanthropy supporting public projects, citing examples of the pétanque courts in Burns Park and the recent gift of $50,000 by the Morris family to renovate South University Park.

The future of community improvement projects like the skatepark will depend on public/private collaboration, Rosencrans told commissioners. Local governments have limited resources, and public servants have a stake in encouraging residents to participate in these projects, he said. Rosencrans urged commissioners to ask their constituents to become involved.

Ann Arbor Skatepark: Commissioner Discussion

Barbara Bergman began by saying that her two grandchildren will look forward to using the skatepark – when they come to visit now, there’s no place to skateboard other than on the sidewalks of Highland Road, which isn’t safe. She also appreciated information about where to by skatepark merchandise: ”I’ll be buying some birthday and Hanukkah presents.”

Conan Smith said he wanted to remind commissioners and the public that the county parks and recreation commission has approved $400,000 in matching funds for the skatepark. [See Chronicle coverage from March 2010: "County Offers $400K Match for Skatepark"] Every dollar that’s donated will be matched, he said, and he urged people to give generously.

Rosencrans explained that people could donate by going to the FOAAS website and clicking on the Crowdrise button.

Several questions by Rolland Sizemore Jr., whose district includes parts of Ypsilanti and Superior townships, reflected his frustration at the Ann Arbor-centric nature of the project so far. He asked whether any stores outside of Ann Arbor sold skatepark merchandise. Not yet, Rosencrans said, but skatepark organizers are working to make that happen. Sizemore said he thinks it’s wrong to exclude other parts of the county. He also objected to the fact that Washtenaw County wasn’t mentioned in the presentation or materials – given the county’s financial contribution, it should be included, he said, even though he knows that will probably irritate people in Ann Arbor.

Sizemore had raised the same issue at the March 2010 meeting of the Washtenaw County parks and recreation commission, when he’d suggested that he’d like the county to get its due in terms of signage associated with the park. At that meeting, he’d asked: “Do we have any input, or is it Ann Arbor and skateboard people?”

Rob Turner echoed Sizemore’s sentiments. Turner, whose district includes Chelsea and other portions of the county’s west side, said there’s considerable interest in the skatepark by residents of western Washtenaw. That part of the county could also be a potential for raising skatepark funds, he noted.

Sizemore told Rosencrans that he started skateboarding when you still had to build your own skateboard – he supported the skatepark, but thought the organizers needed to broaden their reach. The skatepark effort needs to be publicized throughout the county, he said, adding that he’d be happy to help with that effort. Conan Smith noted that Sizemore has been a driving force in the county’s participation in the project – both Smith and Sizemore serve on the county parks & recreation commission.

Sizemore also wanted to know whether skateboarders would be required to wear safety equipment when they use the skatepark. Some kids he’s talked with have indicated they don’t wear helmets and other safety gear, but they would wear the gear if that was the only way to use the skatepark, he said.

Based on his experience as a former Ann Arbor park advisory commissioner, Rosencrans said that typically a committee would be set up to recommend rules for a facility like this. That was the process for creating the BMX/dirt bike course in Bandemer Park, he said.

Sizemore asked whether there might be room to expand the skatepark to include a BMX course at Veterans Memorial Park, too. Rosencrans said the skatepark won’t take up the entire area on that side of the park – the skatepark  site is on the northern side of the park, off of Dexter-Ann Arbor Road.

Leah Gunn, an Ann Arbor commissioner, concluded the board’s comments by speaking to constituents who might be watching the meeting on Community Television Network (CTN) or online: “I sent a check, so all of you – send a check.”

Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority

Dan Myers, the county’s director of public works, and Frank Hammer, a Chelsea city councilmember and board member of the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority, gave a presentation and fielded questions from commissioners about a proposal for expanding the WWRA. Specifically, the authority is asking the county to issue $2.7 million in bonds to help pay for a $3.2 million new recycling facility. The bonds would be repaid through a special assessment levied on the communities in western Washtenaw that agree to be served by the facility.

Myers began by describing the history of WWRA, which was formed in 1991 as a response to the 1989 update of the Washtenaw County Solid Waste Plan, a state-mandated document. Eight communities participated, creating the authority under Public Act 233: the city of Chelsea, the village of Manchester, and the townships of Bridgewater, Dexter, Lima, Lyndon, Manchester and Sylvan.

A contract was struck between the county’s board of public works and the WWRA, and assessment districts were created by the BPW under Public Act 185 to pay for construction of the original facility. New assessments have been made every five years for operations – by 2006, over 11,000 households in these eight communities were assessed annually.

Hammer described the current services that WWRA provides, including curbside recycling in Chelsea and the village of Manchester, and drop-off stations in the townships. The original facility, now 20 years old, was put together on “a wing and a prayer,” he said. It has been operating at a reasonably high level with antiquated equipment, but staff believe it’s time to upgrade the system. About 18 months ago, the WWRA board decided that single-stream recycling was the way to go, he said. The WWRA got feedback that more residents would recycle if they didn’t have to sort materials, as they do now.

An expanded, upgraded facility for single-stream recycling would allow for a range of benefits, Hammer said. Those include: expansion of the types of materials that can be recycled; increased convenience for residents who recycle; ability to store recyclables to capture a higher market value; less material processing time; less fuel use; and decreased staff time.

Myers said that the WWRA has saved $500,000 to put toward the new facility, but needs $2.7 million in bonds to pay the remainder of the $3.2 million project, which includes a new building and equipment. So far, the governing entities of four communities have voted to support the project as “investing” members – Chelsea, and the townships of Dexter, Lyndon and Manchester. That’s a total of about 7,000 households so far that will be assessed to repay the bonds. In addition, the Bridgewater Township board has voted to participate as an “associate” member, with households paying a lower fee for service, but not taking on debt payments. The Lima Township board also voted to become an associate member. [Responding to a follow-up query from The Chronicle, Myers said Lima Township might consider becoming an investing member, pending a review of contractual obligations.]

Chelsea households, which will continue to receive curbside pick-up, would make debt payments of $68 annually, plus $6.35 for operating expenses. Households in the three investing townships would pay $24 annually, plus the $6.35 for operating expenses. Households in associate member communities would pay $24 annually. The plan is to pay off the bonds in 15 years, Myers said – or sooner, if possible. Residents of investing communities would see their annual operating assessments go down as the facility comes on line, while payments would remain static for associate member communities.

Next steps would be for WWRA’s investing members to approve a contract with the county. The county board would also need to approve the contract, authorizing the county’s full faith and credit to back the bonds. A formal proposal is likely to come before the county board for an initial vote in early September. The county board of public works would then establish the special assessments required for the debt and operating budget. Bonds would be sold, allowing for the new facility to be constructed.

Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority: Commissioner Discussion

Commissioners raised several concerns during an extensive discussion about the WWRA project. For this report, their comments and questions are organized by topic.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – Regional Cooperation, Governance

Rolland Sizemore Jr. told Hammer and Myers that he wanted to look at countywide recycling needs – WWRA might find additional savings that way. He asked how many years a community must commit to being an investing member. It’s a 15-year commitment for investing members, but associate members can opt-out after five years, Hammer explained.

Hammer also emphasized that the WWRA is already a regional effort, with multiple communities involved. He noted that Sylvan Township voted against participating in the project. But Sylvan Township has other issues, he said, adding that he hoped Sylvan would eventually sign on as an associate member.

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

Regarding Ann Arbor’s materials recycling facility (MRF), Hammer said it’s on the east side of the county – it would cost more to transport materials there than to build a facility in western Washtenaw, he said.

Sizemore then suggested that Rob Turner, a commissioner whose district covers parts of western Washtenaw, become a WWRA board member. He thought the county board should be represented. Hammer replied that it would entail revising WWRA’s articles of incorporation, but he didn’t see a problem with that. The WWRA board would likely need a special meeting to make that change, he said.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – Finances

Wes Prater asked whether WWRA had a business plan for this project. Hammer reported that they’ve developed a five-year budget, based on several scenarios – with budgets for four investing members, as well as plans based on having five or eight members. When all the communities finalize those decisions, WWRA will be able to finalize its budget, he said. Prater urged him to share that information.

Kristin Judge clarified that the county does not currently fund any portion of WWRA. She pressed the issue of whether WWRA had done a complete analysis of other options, and asked how residents were reacting to the prospect of a special assessment. Hammer reiterated that WWRA had explored other possibilities, but had found it would be cheaper to build its own facility. He said he hadn’t heard any negative reaction about the assessment.

Judge also questioned why the authority itself couldn’t issue the bonds, rather than the county. Hammer replied that WWRA had consulted two bonding agencies. WWRA had been informed that because the smaller communities don’t have a track record issuing bonds – unlike the county, most of the municipalities in the WWRA don’t have a credit rating – they’d be charged higher interest rates.

Hammer told commissioners that there would be zero risk to the county, because the bond payments would be made by assessments on existing households. Myers added that the WWRA is set up through the county’s public works board, so county administrative and finance staff, as well as the county’s bond counsel, have been involved in discussions about the project.

Barbara Bergman questioned the stability of the financing model – what if houses go into foreclosure? In this economy, that’s a real possibility. She also wondered how the pricing of recyclables – which she characterized as “interesting, at best” – is being factored in to the business model. Finally, Bergman wanted more details on WWRA’s analysis of a possible partnership with Ann Arbor’s MRF. Ann Arbor staff have expressed interest in that kind of partnership, she said, and MRF has done work with communities as far away as Lansing.

Hammer replied that if houses go into foreclosure, taxes and assessments will still be collected by the county treasurer. Myers said that even if a small percentage of houses went into foreclosure, and for some reason those assessments weren’t paid, the WWRA would be able to absorb those losses.

Bergman observed that she’d grown less optimistic over the years, and believed that 15-year plans aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The county itself had made very rosy financial forecasts “that crashed in our laps,” she said.

Hammer emphasized that their projections are very conservative. For example, revenue projections are based on prices paid for recyclables in January 2011, even though those prices have increased 15% since then. He also noted that the projections are based on conservative tonnage, and that WWRA has set aside contingency funds. Myers added that debt payments don’t rely on the price of recyclables – the debt will be repaid through assessments on households.

Bergman concluded her comments by saying she wanted more information about why collaborating with Ann Arbor’s MRF wouldn’t work. As an Ann Arbor commissioner, she said, “that’s my very parochial interest.”

Regarding a partnership with MRF, Hammer said there were some very serious flaws in the assumptions on which an analysis by Ann Arbor staff was based. Certain information related to labor costs and insurance hadn’t been factored in, for example. Any way you look at it, he said, transferring recyclables to Ann Arbor’s MRF makes no sense for residents in western Washtenaw, he concluded.

Leah Gunn wondered how projected revenues would be affected, now that the village of Manchester and Sylvan Township had decided not to participate. Hammer said he’s continuing to talk with Sylvan Township officials about the possibility of being an associate member. He was disappointed about Manchester’s decision, but said that the project can proceed without them.

Gunn then noted that she’s seen Ann Arbor’s MRF – it’s a complicated place. So in the WWRA’s business plan, she’ll be looking at items related to operations and maintenance. She said she’s especially sensitive to that because she’s also an Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board member. “I’ll give you two words,” she said. “Parking structures.”

Hammer invited Gunn and other commissioners to tour WWRA’s existing facility, saying they’d find it to be well-maintained and organized.

Alicia Ping, whose district covers southwest Washtenaw, said it was commendable that WWRA had been operating 20 years and had no debt. She confirmed that WWRA also provides recycling services to other communities on a contract basis. Hammer said those revenues hadn’t been factored in to the project’s budget. Ping told her fellow commissioners that when they saw the business plan, they’d be very impressed with it.

Sizemore said he’s a little gun-shy about offering the county’s full faith and credit, but he’d support the project.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – Double Standard?

Rob Turner, a Chelsea resident whose district covers several communities that participate in WWRA, said the recycling authority has provided excellent service for 20 years. The single-stream service will be extremely helpful in increasing the amount of recyclables collected, he said.

Turner pointed to the concerns that fellow commissioners were expressing over issuing $2.7 million in bonds, and wondered why he hadn’t heard the same concerns at their previous meeting. Without discussion, on July 6 the board had approved five drain projects in Ann Arbor that required the county’s full faith and credit on over $6 million in bonds. There hadn’t been this kind of scrutiny of those projects, he observed. “Where’s the pushback – why wasn’t there pushback on these other five issues?” The same questions that are being asked of the WWRA could have been asked about the Ann Arbor drain projects, he said, but weren’t.

Responding to Turner, Leah Gunn noted that the county has had a “long and satisfying relationship” with the county water resources commissioner [Janis Bobrin], and there had never been any defaults in drain assessment districts. [The office of the water resources commissioner made the requests for the drain projects mentioned by Turner.] Gunn said she has confidence in Bobrin, based on past experience. The reason why some commissioners are skittish, Gunn continued, is because of the “mess” they’re in with Sylvan Township.

Kristin Judge noted that when Bobrin comes to them with requests for drainage work, it’s typically related to flooding. Dealing with that is a necessity. Recycling is important and she supports it, but it’s not a necessity, Judge said. Also, it’s technically possible for the WWRA to get services from Ann Arbor’s MRF, she noted. For the drain requests, that’s not possible.

Turner responded by saying the WWRA project is very different from the Sylvan Township situation. Sylvan officials had planned to make bond payments with tap fees from future developments – those developments never materialized, he noted. The WWRA will be assessing existing households.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – Why Not Privatize?

Dan Smith said he’s generally quite supportive of recycling, but noted that the community where he lives – Whitmore Lake – is served by a private company. He wondered whether that might be an option. Everyone talks about doing things differently, he said, and now WWRA is presented with an opportunity to shake things up and look at providing the recycling service in a different way. He had no objection to taxpayers determining how they want to spend their money, but he had some concerns.

He clarified that WWRA was projecting 20% revenue growth over five years. D. Smith noted that he’d been involved in putting together some revenue projections several years ago, and had been very conservative. Yet even those conservative numbers had proven to be too optimistic, he said. Related to foreclosed properties, D. Smith observed that in some cases the county treasurer had difficulty selling foreclosed properties at a price that would cover the taxes owed on the property. There aren’t any guarantees, he said – this economy is different from any situation they have ever experienced.

The county board is concerned about extending its full faith and credit. D. Smith noted that commissioners had lengthy discussions on the issue as it related to a private developer. [Smith was referring to a request made earlier this year for the Packard Square project at the former Georgetown Mall site in Ann Arbor. Developers had asked to use the county’s full faith and credit as a guarantee for a state loan the developers intended to apply for. And after concerns were raised by commissioners, the developers ultimately withdrew that request.] D. Smith said that for the WWRA, it was another government entity making the request, so it’s a different situation. Still, the WWRA needed to follow up on the issues that were being raised, he said.

Hammer responded to D. Smith by saying that the WWRA had approached two businesses – Recommunity Recycling and Republic Waste Services. Neither one were interested in the work, he said.

The WWRA model is very much like a private business, Hammer continued. The WWRA has run the facility for 20 years without incurring debt, and has paid for its equipment in cash. The main difference is that the authority’s bottom line isn’t profit – it’s public service, he said.

D. Smith said it’s appropriate for the county to pledge its full faith and credit for a project that’s providing a public service. At the same time, he added, the county isn’t a bank. What’s the difference in interest rates between having the county issue bonds, compared to the WWRA issuing bonds? Hammer said they’ve been told it would be a difference of at least 2 percentage points.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – Length of Discussion

After about an hour of questions, Barbara Bergman noted that several people had come to the meeting for the night’s final presentation – on proposed changes to the Washtenaw Community Health Organization (WCHO). She felt that questions regarding the WWRA were becoming repetitive, and asked that commissioners wrap up the discussion. Leah Gunn suggested that commissioners send their questions to the county administrative staff, then the answers could be emailed to the board at a later date. It’s a complicated issue, she said, and these questions wouldn’t be resolved that evening.

Wes Prater disagreed, saying the point of a working session was to ask questions about a project.

Conan Smith made a motion to limit the remaining WWRA discussion to 15 minutes.

Outcome: On a 5-4 vote, commissioners limited the WWRA discussion to another 15 minutes from that point in the meeting. Dissenting were Kristin Judge, Alicia Ping, Wes Prater and Rolland Sizemore Jr. Two commissioners – Ronnie Peterson and Yousef Rabhi – were absent.

WWRA: Commissioner Discussion – General Comments

Conan Smith voiced strong support for the proposal, reminding commissioners that the WWRA’s mission would ultimately be valuable to the entire county, not just the western portion. It’s about serving the public, he said, and if residents in that part of the county want their own facility and are willing to pay for it, “let’s help make that happen.” He said he was excited at the prospect of increased recycling because of this project. The finance model works, he said, and the special assessments provide strong financial protection for the county. ”I’m fully supportive of it,” Smith concluded.

Rolland Sizemore said he didn’t like the presentation he’d heard. Many of the questions that were asked had been previously communicated to WWRA, but the county board still didn’t have answers, he said. He cautioned Hammer and Myers to be sure to address these concerns when they came back to the board with a formal request.

Changes at Washtenaw Community Health Organization (WCHO)

Before the presentation on a restructuring proposal for the Washtenaw Community Health Organization, Barbara Bergman – a commissioner who also serves on the WCHO board – apologized to people who had waited through the preceding presentations, and thanked them for their patience.

Patrick Barrie, WCHO’s executive director, began by quipping, “I have a five-hour presentation.” That prompted commissioner Wes Prater to reply, “We’ll stay – we’ll stay!”

Barrie noted that he’s an historian by trade, and he began by giving a brief overview of the WCHO’s “extremely complicated history.” In 1974, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation that enabled the state to shift responsibility for public mental health services to the counties. It was slow going until Gov. William Milliken pushed for financial incentives a few years later, Barrie said, to encourage the transfer. Washtenaw County was one of the first counties to take on that responsibility, he said. Budgets for county mental health programs grew dramatically, both from expanded state funding as well as federal dollars.

In 1996, amendments to the state’s mental health code allowed community mental health services programs (CMHSPs) to be established in three different ways: (1) as an agency of the county; (2) as an organization under the state’s Urban Cooperation Act (UCA); or (3) as a mental health authority – a governmental entity that’s separate from the county, with its own governing board. That code change led to the establishment of the WCHO in 2000, in a partnership between the county and the University of Michigan, set up under the UCA. Governance shifted from the county board to the WCHO board.

With a total budget of $112 million from multiple funding sources, the WCHO serves as the community mental health services program for Washtenaw County, and is the Medicaid prepaid inpatient health plan (PIHP) – a federal designation – for Washtenaw, Monroe, Lenawee and Livingston counties. The PIHP accounts for about 80% of WCHO’s funding. The WCHO is also the substance abuse coordinating agency – a designation under the state’s public health code – for Washtenaw and Livingston counties.

The WCHO primarily serves people with serious mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse disorders, Barrie said. But managing the services is a complex process, he said, because each of the different funding sources has its own set of legal constraints, eligibility requirements, service qualifications and benefit arrangements.

The WCHO has some organizational “peculiarities,” Barrie said. The WCHO uses lease and contract agreements with the county for staff, direct services, facilities and equipment. The WCHO has no employees of its own, he said – “I’m leased.” Its primary contract for services and personnel is through the county’s community support and treatment services (CSTS) department. That county department employs a total of about 300 people. While this arrangement was appropriate at WCHO’s inception, Barrie said, it appears contrary to the intent of the enabling legislation, which seems to indicate that employees would eventually shift over from the county to the WCHO.

There’s also a question of liability for the county, he said. In many ways, there doesn’t appear to be any real distinction between the WCHO and the county – and that exposes the county to liability for the WCHO’s operations. So in consultation with the county administration and legal counsel, the WCHO board is requesting that a small number of administrative, non-union positions – including Barrie – be shifted from the county to the WCHO. Initially only six employees would be transferred, he said, with possibly an additional eight employees transfered at a later date. The employees would be limited to those who are necessary for the operation of the agreement between WCHO and the county, he said. And all of the transfers are being vetted to ensure that no employees would be disadvantaged because of the change, in terms of their salaries and benefits.

There are no plans to transfer employees beyond this core group, Barrie said, and the change would not significantly affect other financial arrangements between the county and the WCHO. The intent is to establish an arm’s length relationship between the two entities, he said, and to put some key administrative positions under the control of the WCHO board.

Changes at WCHO: Commissioner Discussion

Leah Gunn noted that she has sat next to Barbara Bergman at county board meetings for 15 years, and during that time Bergman has explained how WCHO has been organized and reorganized over the years. It’s extraordinary what the organization delivers in terms of services, she said. Gunn described the organization as complex and she didn’t completely understand it, but she said she had confidence in Barrie.

Wes Prater said the county is carrying a liability now, and would benefit from making these changes. He asked for more details, including a proposed timeline for the changes.

Initially, Barrie said, the WCHO is looking to shift over six administrative employees, including himself. There might be an additional eight employees in a second wave, assuming the employees qualify as people who are essential to the functioning of WCHO’s mission. This would establish an arm’s length relationship between WCHO and the county, he said. The interlocal agreement between WCHO and the county states that the county isn’t liable for WCHO’s debts, but the current structure of the organization belies that, he said.

WCHO’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and that’s the timeline the organization has set for making these changes, Barrie said. The WCHO has hired attorney Jerry Lax to evaluate each employee’s status and ensure that employees wouldn’t be disadvantaged by transferring to the WCHO – Barrie said the WCHO, not the county, is footing the bill for that legal work. He hopes to make the change prior to any state legislative changes, he said, adding that every day in Lansing bills are introduced that weaken protections for public employees. ”So sooner rather than later is probably a good idea,” he said.

Kristin Judge said she gave her full support to this transition, and that taking care of WCHO’s customers should be the No. 1 goal.

In response to a query from Bergman, Barrie explained that the WCHO has been able to find creative ways to maximize federal grant support for services – when federal stimulus funds were available, about 75% of WCHO’s budget was from federal funding. All states are preparing for the upcoming changes in 2014 resulting from federal health care reforms, he said. Unless Congress alters the current law, Medicaid will expand the number of eligible recipients significantly in 2014, and funding is available for poorer states to help handle that influx. “We were a donor state for a lot of years,” Barrie said, “but now we’re living off federal dollars.”

Bergman joked that with WCHO as a separate entity, the county might be able to sell some of its assets to the organization. Barrie quipped that WCHO could be a toxic asset fund, but quickly noted that he had said that in jest. Barrie said he’s very concerned about the future configuration of health care services in Michigan, citing Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to make an announcement related to health care in September.

The WCHO is working on how to use its affiliation with UM to come up with novel ways to keep control of mental health services in the public sector, rather than see it shift to private sector entities.

Rob Turner praised WCHO and CSTS, referencing specifically a partnership with the nonprofit Faith in Action that serves the western part of Washtenaw County, which he represents. He supported the reorganization, and said he thought it would allow WCHO to grow and serve local residents in even better, more efficient ways.

Changes at WCHO: Public Commentary

Three people spoke on the issue of WCHO restructuring at the meeting’s final public commentary period.

Paquetta Palmer told commissioners that she works in the CSTS department. The staff has been left out of the discussions about these changes, she said. The way that these changes are communicated is crucial to the staff’s comfort level – but they’ve just been hearing rumors, she said. The process should be laid out very clearly. There are also other counties that have gone through this kind of change, Palmer said, and it hasn’t always been effective.

The timing is also an issue, since right now unions that represent county employees are in a negotiating period, and people are fearful about what might happen to their jobs, she said. As a taxpayer, she’s also used the services of the Washtenaw Health Plan, Palmer said, and a lot of people are concerned about what the changes will mean to these services.

If the WCHO is separate from the county, for example, will CSTS be a preferred provider of services? Or will it be only one of a number of contractors that WCHO will consider? Palmer also indicated that she had previously expressed interest in serving on the WCHO board, but was told that county employees couldn’t do that. However, she noted that commissioner Barbara Bergman was on the board, as were people from UM and the community – but no county staff were represented. She reiterated that the county staff has useful input, and that the board and administration should seek that input.

Peg Ball expressed appreciation for the county in supporting these services, and said the time is right for a change. She hoped that commissioners would support the proposal. Responding to Palmer, Ball said she felt like communication would improve – she’d hard WCHO board members talk about the importance of communication with WCHO, CSTS employees and people who use the services.

Dennis McDougal, a WCHO board member, said he welcomed the support of commissioners for these changes. He praised Bergman for her support during this transition. And as a consumer of WCHO/CSTS services himself, he also wanted to support the staff for their work.

Several commissioners responded to the public commentary. Bergman thanked her fellow WCHO board members, then told Palmer that she felt the new organization would better serve county residents. They need to continue improving communication, she said.

Alicia Ping said she’d heard similar complaints from staff about poor communication regarding the reorganization of the employment training and community services (ETCS) department, which is merging with the office of community development and the economic development & energy department. It’s a balancing act, she said, especially during labor negotiations. But the board needs to be sensitive to the rumors that are out there.

Rob Turner concluded the discussion by saying that the more the staff knows, the more likely they’ll be to support and take ownership of these changes. Employees can be a big help, he said.

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

Absent: Ronnie Peterson, Yousef Rabhi

Next regular board meeting: Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at the county administration building, 220 N. Main St. The Ways & Means Committee meets first, followed immediately by the regular board meeting. [confirm date] (Though the agenda states that the regular board meeting begins at 6:45 p.m., it usually starts much later – times vary depending on what’s on the agenda.) Public comment sessions are held at the beginning and end of each meeting. In addition, the board will hold a July 21 working session on the 2012-2013 budget, starting at 6:30 p.m. in the same location.

Next working session: Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at the county administration building, 220 N. Main St. The working session will focus on the 2012-2013 budget.

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The city council had voted on March 15, 2010 to adopt the single-stream recycling program, which began exactly one year ago, on July 5, 2010.

At that time, the city approved a contract with RAA that called for a payment of $3.25 per month per cart that RAA empties, plus a per-ton payment of between $18.74 and $30.00. The amount of revenue RAA has received through these two kinds of revenue was less than projected last year. Specifically, the tonnage payments received by RAA for fiscal year 2011 (which ended June 30) for recyclable material were projected to be $406,332 but in fact only generated $187,560 for RAA – only 46% of what was expected. The shortfall was $218,772.

Also, the city expected to distribute 32,779 carts, but it turned out that only 29,734 carts were deployed, or 9.3% fewer than planned. The staff memo accompanying the resolution explained the reduced number this way: “… many of the smaller multi-family residential units that were previously using the 11-gallon recycling ‘totes’ are able to share recycle carts, resulting in a smaller number of deployed carts.” In terms of revenue, the reduced number of carts meant that RAA received only $1,159,626 compared to the projected $1,278,381 – for a shortfall of $118,755.

Summing the shortfalls in the two kinds of revenue ($118,755 + $218,772), RAA received $337,527 less than it expected for FY 2011. The increase in the monthly per-cart service fee requested (but rejected by the council) – for all five years of the five-year contract – would have worked out to nearly cover the annual shortfall that was due only to the decreased number of carts: $107,042 versus $118,755.

The overly-optimistic projections were made by the city’s recycling consultant Resource Recycling Systems and RecycleBank, a company that administers a coupon-based incentive program to encourage residents to recycle. When the council approved the single-stream recycling contract with RAA last year, it also struck a 10-year deal with RecycleBank, at roughly $200,000 per year, to administer their coupon-based incentive program to help boost recycling rates in conjunction with the single-stream rollout.

At the time, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) questioned the length of the RecycleBank contract, and established in the course of deliberations that the city’s opt-out clause would be less costly than the cost of the contract. He was concerned that the city had options in the event that RecycleBank’s incentives did not boost recycling tonnage to the levels that were forecast. ["Council Banks on Single-Stream Recycling"]

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

Jack Eaton and Margie Teall, candidates for the Ward 4 city council seat, engage in the subtleties of negotiation over who would deliver their opening remarks first. (Photos by the writer.)

City council representatives are elected for two-year terms and each of the city’s five wards has two seats on the council, one of which is elected each year. Also in attendance at Tuesday’s forum was Marcia Higgins, the Ward 4 council representative who won re-election in November 2009, defeating independent challenger Hatim Elhady.

Besides Higgins, other elected officials and candidates for office who were introduced at the forum included: LuAnne Bullington (candidate for the 11th District county board of commissioners seat), Ned Staebler (candidate for the 53rd District state Representative seat), Leah Gunn (county commissioner representing the 9th District of the county and seeking re-election), Patricia Lesko (candidate for Ann Arbor mayor). All the candidates are Democrats.

Eaton’s main theme was a need to focus more on infrastructure – those things we need, not the things that might be nice to have. Eaton was keen to establish that his candidacy was not meant as a personal attack on Teall, saying that he expected his supporters to focus on the issues and to conduct themselves in a civil way. His opening remarks were heavy on thanks and appreciation for Teall’s long service on council, particularly with regard to the creation of Dicken Woods, which is now a city-owned nature area.

In the course of the forum, a pointed question to Teall on her biggest regret while serving on the council elicited an acknowledgment from her that she regretted her contribution to the problem last year with city councilmembers emailing each other during council meetings. Eaton was quick to give Teall credit for publicly apologizing in a timely way for her role in the scandal.

For her part, Teall focused on setting forth accomplishments while serving on the council. Those ranged from the longer-term budgeting strategies that she said had helped ensure that Ann Arbor was weathering the economic crisis better than other Michigan cities, to the budget amendment she introduced and the council passed in May, which proposed using $2 million from the Downtown Development Authority, plus more optimistic estimates for state revenue sharing, to eliminate the need to lay off some police and firefighters.

The candidates exchanged different views on basic infrastructure issues like the Stadium Boulevard bridges and stormwater management, to single-stream recycling and leaf collection, to Georgetown Mall, and the transparency of government.

The candidate responses are ordered largely in the order in which they were made. But in some cases, questions of similar theme are grouped in a way not consistent with their chronological order.

Opening Statement

Each candidate gave an opening statement.

Eaton’s Opening Statement

Eaton began by thanking everyone for taking time out of their busy lives to come listen to the candidates and to “ponder the future of our city.” He specifically thanked Tom Johnson and Greg Hebert, co-chairs of the Ward 4 Democratic Party, for organizing the forum. He also thanked Teall for her many years of service on the city council – he thought many people did not understand how much time and effort serving on the city council actually takes.

Jack Eaton, candidate for Ann Arbor city council Ward 4, gives his opening statement during the candidate forum sponsored by the Democratic Party.

He also said that he wanted to thank Teall on behalf of his neighborhood for helping to protect Dicken Woods – they’d stopped a developer and managed to turn it into a park. He said he wanted to make clear that he was not running against Teall for any personal reasons – he does not dislike her, he said, and he would “not say mean things about her.” He and Teall “simply disagree about some issues.”

Addressing his supporters, he asked them to conduct themselves in a civil way – that they discuss the issues and not the people, that they make it a campaign they could be proud of organizing together.

“I am running for city council because I disagree with the current council’s vision for our city.” He went on to say that he disagreed with the current city council’s budget priorities.

Ann Arbor is a great town, he said, that is unique and special – we have fabulously talented people, and live with Midwestern values. Michigan, he said, is facing difficult economic times, as is Ann Arbor, but not to the extent that Detroit, or Flint, or Battle Creek are facing them. Nonetheless, he said, we will have a difficult budget to manage in the near future. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), he said, had estimated that 69% of Ann Arbor residents over the age of 25 have at least a bachelor’s degree. So Ann Arbor has a highly educated workforce that is prepared for the modern economy, he said. As result, Ann Arbor has a lower unemployment rate than other areas in Michigan, and our property values have declined less than other areas of the state. Nevertheless, he cautioned, we will see a decline in property tax revenues, as well as a decrease in state revenue sharing.

During the next two years, he said, we need to focus on our core public services – public safety, roads, bridges and infrastructure, and maintenance of our parks and recreation program. We especially need to pay attention to human services, he said, and to help those who are least able to help themselves.

During these difficult economic times, he said, the city needs to withdraw from real estate speculation and projects that are not necessary but merely desirable. If we take care of core services, he suggested, the highly educated population would draw employers, the economy will stabilize, property tax revenues will stabilize, and we can move on to pursue a different vision. In the short term, however, we have to focus on those things that are absolutely necessary, and put aside the things that are merely desirable.

Eaton promised that as a city councilmember, he would support citizens’ needs and desires for fundamental services.

Teall’s Opening Statement

Teall also began by thanking everyone, including the organizers of the forum, Tom Johnson and Greg Hebert, the co-chairs of the Ward 4 Democratic Party. She also thanked Eaton for his kind comments – she confirmed that it is a lot of hard work serving on the city council.

Margie Teall, Ward 4 city council incumbent, responds to questions during the candidate forum.

Since 2002, she said, the council had been able to accomplish some “pretty amazing things.” What makes that significant, she said, was that the challenges have and continue to be significant. We currently face the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, she said, and sources of state and federal funds that cities have counted on for decades have been drying up. Funding that was previously available in the ’80s and ’90s and also in the early part of the current decade was no longer available, she said. Across the state, she said, cities are seeing their budgets stretched past the limits.

Some other cities were letting their fund reserve balances get dangerously low and have put their bond ratings at risk. Ann Arbor, however, has been very careful to protect its bond rating, said Teall. Royal Oak, she reported, was looking at 43 layoffs in July – including 14 firefighter positions and 16 police officers. Grand Rapids is asking voters to increase their income tax rate and they are looking at 14 more layoffs on top of the 125 positions that were eliminated this past cycle.

Teall stated that Ann Arbor was fortunate to have a mayor and city council who had the foresight to make necessary structural budget changes early on. When she was first elected in 2002, she said, the council had prioritized the budget at its first goal-setting session. They had focused on the basics of city government and operation. As a result, she said, Ann Arbor was weathering the economic storm as well or better than any other city in the state. Despite the fact that Ann Arbor had lost up to 5% of its property tax revenues due to the sale of the Pfizer property to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor was still answering the demands that decades of neglect of roads, water treatment, and sewer infrastructure had left them, she said.

Ann Arbor is still not raising taxes and the fund reserve balance is healthy enough to maintain a very high bond rating, Teall said. That had been the result of very careful planning and decision-making, she said. She herself had accomplished a great deal for Ward 4 residents, she said, as well as for the city as a whole. The very first neighborhood meeting she attended in November of 2002, she said, was in the same room as the forum that evening – and the topic of the meeting had been the threat to the area that is now Dicken Woods.

Teall worked with many of the residents to stop the sale of the land to the developer and to work out a plan to arrange for the city itself to purchase the land, she said. She gave credit to the neighborhood for making the area what it is today, saying that they had taken a “diamond in the rough and polished it.” She thanked the neighbors for “taking the ball and running really hard with it.” She reported that last week the city council had voted to make Dicken Woods officially city of Ann Arbor parkland.

Two years ago, she said, she had worked with her colleague from Ward 4, Marcia Higgins, to rezone part of Lower Burns Park to prevent more single-family residences from being broken up into multiple rental units. More recently, she said she had written and co-sponsored a resolution to create a neighborhood task force to work with the city attorneys and planning staff to provide oversight and input into the redevelopment of the vacant Georgetown Mall and to address concerns about its current security.

Last month, she said, she had sponsored a budget amendment to prevent football-Saturday parking in Allmendinger and Frisinger parks. A year ago, she continued, the Ann Arbor Senior Center had been slated to close two days after the candidate forum was being held – July 1, 2010. She said she had taken the lead during last year’s budget process to reverse that decision – she wrote the resolution creating the senior center task force and had chaired that task force over the last year. The task force had made dozens of recommendations and the city staff had subsequently implemented them to make the senior center sustainable in the future, she said.

On the city’s environmental commission, she said, she had worked on the ordinance that restricts the use of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer. She also cited her role in helping to convert Ann Arbor’s recycling system from a dual-stream to a single-stream system – that would help to establish Ann Arbor as the leader that it previously was in the field of recycling, she said, stating that it would save the city about $650,000 a year in labor and tipping fees.

She concluded her list of accomplishments by saying that she had taken the lead on an amendment to the budget this last spring that prevented the layoff of police officers and had kept all of the fire stations opened. The fire chief had assured the council that response times and staffing levels would not be adversely impacted, and neither would residents’ insurance rates. She said she looked forward to serving the city for another two years – the turbulent economic times required the kind of continuity that only the current leadership could offer, she concluded.

Georgetown Mall

Question: Please comment on the future of the Georgetown Mall. [The property, now a vacant strip mall, is located on Packard Road, between Pine Valley and King George boulevards.]

Teall on Georgetown Mall

Teall indicated that she had been working with a citizens group to follow closely what the current owner is doing – they had taken a tour of the property last month and they have another meeting on July 15. The city attorney and city planning staff are working with the group. They are optimistic that the owner will take the group’s suggestions and input, Teall reported.

Eaton on Georgetown Mall

Eaton said that Georgetown Mall represents an unfortunate failure of the city council to act, based on its first lesson on urban blight. Out on Jackson Road, he said, the old Michigan Inn was allowed to “waste away for years” without any response in the form of legislation that addresses urban blight. The same thing appears to be happening with Georgetown Mall, he cautioned.

There are no ordinances, he contended, that address responsibilities of landowners with regard to abandoned property – the site is a magnet for vagrants and crime. The issue needs to be addressed on a broader level than just the one site, he contended. That’s because apparently the city will face more of this kind of thing, he said. There is an abandoned site at the bottom of Broadway Hill that used to be a neighborhood shopping center – Kroger – that is now just a field of weeds, and there’s an abandoned site at Washtenaw and Platt across the street from the Whole Foods store with a few abandoned buildings – it’s also filled with weeds, he said.

In a best case scenario, Eaton said, Georgetown Mall would be demolished and become a field of weeds. It is important, he said, to assign responsibility to landowners with respect to abandoned property so that properties don’t just “fester” in the neighborhoods as urban blight.

State of the City

Question: How is the city better than it was 10 years ago?

Teall on State of the City

Teall said that the most basic way she felt the city was better is the fact that the budget is much more solid than it was previously. The city is addressing infrastructure needs that had been neglected 10 years ago, she said. When the city was flush and the city had the money to do a lot of things, the city didn’t do them. As examples of projects the city is now undertaking, she pointed to the storm water project at Pioneer High School and the renovations to the water treatment plant. In addition, the greenbelt, she said, was enhancing the quality of life in the whole city.

Eaton on State of the City

Eaton said he’s running for city council because he thinks that in some ways the city is not better than it was 10 years ago. But he said that he did believe there were wonderful things that have happened in the last 10 years. As examples, he said the city has added to its park system, Adopt-a-Park has been implemented, neighborhoods have been activated to become more involved in politics – there are a lot of exciting things happening in town. What’s better now, he said, is that the town has a robust sense of community and continues to improve it.

The Democratic Party

One question was directed only to Eaton.

Question: Can you tell us what you have done for the Ann Arbor Democratic Party in the last few years?

Eaton on Democratic Party

Eaton began by saying that he voted regularly. He also contributed to Democratic candidates, he said. He also said he had helped organize neighborhood organizations in town that focus around Democratic-based issues.

Malletts Creek and Drainage Issues

Question: As a long-time resident of Lansdowne I have witnessed the deterioration of Malletts Creek as an asset of Ward 4. Unfortunately, stormwater and silt from the new developments west of Ward 4 and from within Ward 4 have been directed into the creek. When is the city council going to review the work of the drain commissioner?

Eaton on Drainage Issues

Eaton began by saying he did not think it was the work of the city council to direct the county drain commissioner [now called the water resources commissioner]. But he noted that the city has flooding problems in a variety of areas – not just Malletts Creek. A couple of years ago, the city council had commissioned and paid for a study on flooding, but had refused the results, he contended. It’s becoming a more and more important issue, he said.

Eaton said he was not living in Ann Arbor in 1968 when the city had experienced a huge flood, but he noted that there was an increasing frequency of floods. He said he had visited Lansdowne to look at the problem that they are having with Malletts Creek. It would require a joint effort on the part of the neighborhood, which owns some of the infrastructure, and the city, which owns the bridge. But the flooding problem needs a city response, he said. We can’t allow development to proceed, he said, without gauging impact on drainage and surface water.

Referring to a heavy-rain-related incident that was reported to the city council at a recent meeting, Eaton said that no one should wake up and find 70,000 gallons of water in their basement. It’s not an individual’s problem that happens, he said, but rather a failure of the city to address its fundamental stormwater problems and to address them in a broad-based manner.

Teall on Drainage Issues

Teall said the flood map that she thought Eaton had referred to was expected to be ready in the fall. She said that she and the other Ward 4 representative, Marcia Higgins, had visited the location where a resident had had their basement flooded with 70,000 gallons of water, and toured the entire area with city staff – Cresson Slotten, a senior project manager, and Craig Hupy, who is head of systems planning. She characterized the failure as a failure of the system that had been installed – it had been designed to take the stormwater and treat it in a certain way and the system had failed for that specific heavy rain event.

Teall indicated that the neighborhood association has ownership of some of the infrastructure for a bridge between two ponds.

Malletts Creek Bridge

Question: What about the bridge that goes across Malletts Creek between Morehead and Delaware? It’s been out of service for two years and is getting to be a nuisance.

Teall on Malletts Creek Bridge

Teall indicated it was the same bridge that she was talking about before – it’s a pedestrian bridge. The footings on the bridge are not in good shape, she said, so the city could not simply go in and replace the bridge above the footings. With respect to the ownership of the bridge, Teall was uncertain which parts were privately owned and which parts were owned by the city.

Eaton on Malletts Creek Bridge

Eaton chimed in to say that the structures under the bridge were owned by the neighborhood association, but the bridge itself is a park bridge, built and owned by the city. The neighborhood, Eaton said, was complaining because they’d been trying to work with the city to find a resolution to the problem that has persisted for a couple of years and they have become frustrated.

Eaton indicated that he was uncertain what the city had done or not done, but that he understood that there could be frustration when a process took a couple of years. Given the recent flooding issues during a major rainstorm, he said, now was perhaps the time to take responsibility for Malletts Creek and the bridge.

Stadium Bridges

Question: What could you do to prevent the Stadium bridges fiasco?

[For background on the Stadium bridges, including a timeline of events related to the bridges see Chronicle coverage: "Budget Round 6: Bridges, Safety Services" ]

Teall on Stadium Bridges

Teall began by reviewing some of the history of the issue. The railroad bridge had been at 61.5 out of 100 on the Federal Sufficiency Rating (FSR) scale and the State Street bridge had been at 21.2. She said that they’d begun meeting with the public back in 2007 – there’d been a plan developed by city engineers and staff which had included various efficiencies that come from combining multiple projects.

The project at that point included lowering State Street to allow for trucks to go under the bridge, and was to include construction of non-motorized amenities on Main Street and on Stadium Boulevard. Opposite Pioneer High School, on the east side of Main, she said, sidewalks and bike lanes were to be installed, as well as from White Street to Main Street along the south side of Stadium Boulevard. The proposal would have required land from the Ann Arbor Golf and Outing Club, she said, and residents were incensed. She said she’d received numerous handwritten letters from people upset about it.

At that point, she said, the city had decided to take a step back to reduce the scale of the project. In 2009, she said, there were two additional public meetings asking for input on the design. Within that timeframe, the rating on the State Street bridge had fallen to 2 out of 100. Beams were removed from the south side of the bridge.

The current rating, she said, was 23.5. She indicated that she did not consider it to be a “fiasco” but rather a “long process” which she looked forward to seeing completed. She characterized as “foolish” the idea of going ahead with reconstruction of the bridges this fall – that is, using the road millage dollars for the next few years. The city’s strategy was to see if they could get funding from the federal government and the state government. She said she felt the city had a good chance of getting that funding – it’s what other cities do as a funding strategy.

Eaton on Stadium Bridges

Eaton said that in 2007 the spans were already rated at 21-22 out of 100 – where a score of 50 or less out of 100 means that you need to consider repairing or replacing the bridge. As currently proposed, the project does not include the intersection of Main and Stadium – a plan that does not include the controversial aspects involving the sidewalks that required land from the Ann Arbor Golf and Outing Club. But when the Obama administration offered stimulus money for this very kind of project, Eaton said, the city did not have a “shovel-ready” plan – the city had lost out on the chance at that point in time.

Now, he continued, the city was counting on much smaller sums of money that are distributed much more widely. The city had not received TIGER I money [the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant] and would likely not receive TIGER II money either, Eaton said. Given that a score of 50 out of 100 meant that the bridge should be considered for repair or replacement, Eaton said, the bridge, with its history of FSR scores under that number, meant that the problem had been ignored for too long.

He suggested that bonds should be floated if necessary to reconstruct the bridge and that road millage dollars be used to retire those bonds over time. We need to take care of the problem and not just let it linger, he said, hoping that “free money” would come to town. It’s ridiculous to continue to put it off, he concluded.

Airport Runway

Question: Are you for or against the airport runway extension project?

[For background on a possible airport runway extension see Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Airport Study Gets Public Hearing"]

Eaton on the Airport Runway

Eaton said that he was against the extension, citing a variety of other airports in the area that can handle larger aircraft. It’s important to maintain the municipal airport for enthusiasts who fly, but there are other facilities available for heavier aircraft carrying heavier loads. He understood, he said, that pilots always prefer a longer runway, but the concerns of the surrounding neighborhood need to be respected.

Teall on the Airport Runway

Teall indicated she did not have much to add – she is not in favor of a runway extension. She’d been in favor of the environmental assessment [conducted in connection with a possible extension project] because of the drinking water wells that are located on the airport property – the wells were important to protect, she said.

Single-Stream Recycling

Question: What is your position on single-stream recycling?

[For an opinion piece covering much of the background material on single-stream recycling, see: "Column: Recycling Virtues and MORE"]

Teall on Single-Stream Recycling

Teall began by describing the process as one that we’d all be getting more familiar with starting next week, when we begin putting all recycling materials in one cart [instead of the two different totes that the city now uses]. Chicago, as well as many other cities, are now using that approach, she said. She described it as a money-saver for the city as well as an opportunity to increase the city’s recycling performance.

Teall described the participation rate in recycling as high, but said that as a city, not as much material was being recovered as the city could achieve. She cited a view that had been expressed by Dan Ezekiel [who serves on the city's greenbelt advisory commission (GAC)], who has said that recycling won’t be really successful until it’s as easy to recycle as it is to throw something away.

She said she looked forward to being issued her new cart and being able to throw everything – paper, plastic, and the rest – into the same cart. It also would keep the streets cleaner, she said.

Eaton on Single-Stream Recycling

Eaton began by contrasting dual-stream with the single-stream system. Under the current dual-stream system, he began, you put your paper in one bin and the bottles and cans in another bin. Under the new system, he continued, we’ll be issued “another one of those carts that we all love so much.” [The reference there is to the wheeled carts that the city has issued for trash collection (blue) and compost/leaf collection (brown).]

The purpose of recycling is not to see how much you can get people to put in the bin, he said, but rather to see how much of the material can be put into recycled products. The problem with single-stream recycling, he cautioned, is that it all goes in together – it would be cross-contaminated. There would be broken glass and tomato sauce amongst the paper – it would be a mess, he warned, and would result in less material available to go into products made from recycled material.

The solid waste millage, he said, had accumulated a $6 million surplus, which the city was now going to use to convert to a single-stream recycling process. He said he would have preferred to reduce taxes instead of creating a new system. The new system would provide a new cart, he said, which could be used to recycle margarine and yogurt cups, but it would no longer be possible to put motor oil out for curbside pickup. And when people go to the drop-off center, they’ll have to pay a new $3 entry fee to drop off items they used to put out at the curb.

The $6 million surplus was being spent on the new single-stream recycling system, he said, but the city was discontinuing the loose leaf collection program where residents could sweep their leaves into the street. They’d have to be put into a compost cart, he said. You could put your cart out once a week through the fall, and after that, if you had more leaves, you’d be stuck. In addition, he said, we’d be employing low-wage workers to separate the materials – people we don’t currently have to employ because residents separate the materials when they fill their bins.

Leaf Collection

There was a specific question on leaf collection, tacked on to a question about the “bucket system” of budgeting, which is presented here separately.

Question: “… without cutting popular services like leaf collection?”

Eaton on Leaf Collection

On leaf collection, Eaton said he was going to miss the leaf collection. “I have lot of leaves!” he said. The idea of dragging his compost cart repeatedly through the fall out to the curb, instead of having two mass leaf collections, does not appeal to him.

Teall on Leaf Collection

Teall said that the leaf collection issue had been looked at for a long time – Ann Arbor is the only city of similar size that still collects leaves by having people sweep them into the street and then using bulldozers and dump trucks to haul them away. The new approach would keep the streets and the stormwater system cleaner and she’d been encouraging the change to happen for some time.

Teall pointed out that paper bags could be used in addition to the compost carts. She also pointed out that bicyclists would be a lot happier [to not have leaves dumped where they ride in the street], especially in the colder months after the snow falls and the leaves freeze.

Bucket System of Accounting

Question: How do you feel about the current “bucket system” of budgeting? Shouldn’t a program with a surplus be allowed to help fund programs with a shortfall …?

Eaton on Bucket Accounting

Eaton addressed the issue of the “bucket method” by saying that it was simply fund allocation budgeting – there are certain funds that have limited uses. So, for example, when we tax ourselves with a solid waste millage, we can only use that money to address solid waste issues. Monies collected for the water system can only be used for the water system.

But the city takes this one step further, Eaton explained. Within the general fund, the city allocates to specific funds – like the attorney’s office, or the IT department or the mayor’s office – and they refer to those funds as “buckets” as well. The implication, he said, is that it’s not possible to take money out of the legal department and use it to pay for police or to take money out of the IT department and use it to pay for firefighters. And that, he said, is not true.

To the extent that the term “bucket” is misleading, he said, he is against that. But fund allocation of budgeting is an accepted method of budgeting, he pointed out. It is important to understand which funds have actual restrictions on them and which ones are fungible. You can choose to shift money among funds that don’t have legal restrictions on them, he said.

He pointed out that the federal government does not accept the fund allocation method of budgeting for their annual reporting. The city needs to produce a separate Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which is filed with the IRS, and which he characterized as a more reliable way of looking at how the city uses its money.

To the extent that it’s just an analogy, he said, he had no objection to the “bucket” method.

Teall on Bucket Accounting

With respect to fund allocations, Teall said that Eaton was correct about the fact that there are certain millages that by state law cannot be moved into other funds. When voters tax themselves for a service, you can’t just move it to a different fund for another kind of operation.

In terms of fund allocations within the city, she pointed out that for the legal and IT funds, those departments support other operations. The legal and IT departments do not just work for themselves independently, she said – they support other departments, like safety services. She summarized by saying that “We can’t starve one area in order to feed another area.”

Street Lighting

Questions: Are you in favor of special assessment districts [to fund street lights]? How do you feel about the city turning off street lights in certain areas?

[Special assessment districts and other options for reducing city expenses for streetlights were discussed at a spring budget meeting: "Budget Round 4: Lights, Streets, Grass"]

Teall on Street Lighting

Teall said that special assessment districts for lighting are something that should be considered. The street lights that are being turned off, she said, would save money by reducing lighting in areas that are “overlit,” according to federal and state standards. The initiative to turn off street lights, she said, was something that had been passed as part of the budget in May. She stressed that the light posts are not being removed. The city would evaluate the results of the program, she said, as it was implemented. [The city describes the current program as a "pilot."]

Eaton on Street Lighting

Eaton stated that he was against special assessment districts for street lighting – he could not imagine taxing people on the basis of how many street lights are in their neighborhood. He is also opposed to turning off street lights.

He noted that the police force had been reduced significantly over the course of the last six to eight years, and said that the state is releasing criminals they can no longer afford to imprison. “And now we are going to darken our streets?” he asked. We pay a lot of taxes, he said. If we don’t build underground parking lots, if we don’t spend $0.5 million planning “a train station that may or may not be necessary,” if we don’t do the things that we just want to do, then we would not have to turn off street lights, he concluded. [Eaton's reference to a "train station" is to Fuller Road Station. Most recent Chronicle coverage: "PAC Softens Stance on Fuller Road Station" ]

City Worker Pay and Benefits

Question: How do pay and benefits for the private sector compare to city workers?

Eaton on City Worker Pay and Benefits

Eaton began by saying that as Michigan’s economy has declined, it’s become more obvious that public employees are relatively highly paid and may have higher benefits than a lot of people in the private sector.

A few years ago, the mayor commissioned a blue-ribbon panel, he said, to study city benefits and retirement policy, but had acted on none of the findings of that committee. We need to work with city unions, to address the problem, Eaton suggested.

He reported that he’d received the endorsement of the firefighters union and the way he’d done that was to restore trust and honesty at the bargaining table. He’d told them that the city needed to cut employee costs, but he also told them that he wanted the bargaining to be honest and trustworthy.

They’re willing to work with the city, he reported, but they believe that they’re being lied to. In Ann Arbor, Eaton said, there are a large number of public sector employees that can be used as comparatives – there are a large number of such employees at the University of Michigan, he said. So it’s not just a private-public comparison, he noted. It was important to find a way to work with employees, he concluded.

Teall on City Worker Pay and Benefits

Teall said that the city’s employees are “decently compensated” but said it was not her place as a councilmember to bargain with unions. That’s something that the city administrator and the labor attorneys did, and it was their job to do. If she were to step into that, it would make impossible the job the city administrator had been hired to do. The city’s bargaining side comes back and checks with the council to see if it’s okay to move forward and that’s a councilmember’s role. On the whole, she said, the city was encouraging its employees to take on a lot more in terms of paying for health care and benefits.

Regrets

One question was addressed specifically to Teall.

Question: What has been your greatest regret serving on council?

Teall on Regret

Teall said that her greatest regret was contributing to the problem that the council had last year when councilmembers were sending emails back and forth to each other during city council meetings.

She said the result was that the council had quickly changed the council rules so that emails between councilmembers during meetings are restricted. She said it was a mistake for councilmembers to have done that and that she had said so last year.

Eaton weighed in by saying that he felt Teall deserved credit for promptly making a public apology over the “email brouhaha.”

Email Policy

Question: What will be your policy/practice regarding constituent emails – will you respond to them?

Eaton on Email Policy

Eaton said that, yes, he would respond to emails. He said it would be his intention to respond promptly. He also said he would favor adopting a council rule that all council business with their constituents be conducted through a councilmember’s official government email address, so that requests under the Freedom of Information Act can be easily met by the city. He said he would not conduct city business through his private email account – he believes in transparency and responsiveness. He said he believed that the council needed rules to govern this.

Teall on Email Policy

Teall indicated that she did try to respond to emails from constituents – she allowed that she did not always do so quickly. She said if she went out of town she might not necessarily take her computer with her. But she said that it was certainly her intent to respond to emails in some fashion.

With respect to transparency, she said she agreed with Eaton. In her experience, she said, constituents emailed her on her government account and receiving emails on a private account had not been an issue.

Transparency in Government

Question: If elected or re-elected, what would you do to create transparency in government?

Teall on Transparency

Teall began by saying that she didn’t think there was a more transparent municipal government in the state than Ann Arbor’s. She pointed to the numerous boards and commissions that the city had, which had meetings that were posted and open to anybody to attend. The city had high ratings – the top 10% – for the transparency of its budget. In her estimation, Teall said, they did everything they could to communicate openly. She told the audience that she knew they had come to a lot of those meetings and they were welcome to come to a lot more.

Eaton on Transparency

[Eaton discusses various aspects of the city charter, which are laid out in some detail in this opinion piece: "Getting Smarter About the City Charter"]

Eaton began by reacting to Teall’s contention that Ann Arbor’s government was transparent by saying cheerily, “I disagree!” He noted that the city charter mandates that city documents are to be available to the public – we have a right to see what goes on. Specifically, he said, when the city attorney renders an opinion, those documents are to be made public so that we can see what the legal advice is on which the council is acting.

On an ongoing basis, Eaton said, you have to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to find out why a police officer is patrolling your neighborhood with unusual frequency. You have to file a FOIA request to obtain documents that should be readily available.

Even filing a FOIA request will not cause the city to produce any opinion that the city attorney has rendered, Eaton said. Instead, the city attorney has taken the position that his opinions are attorney-client privileged information between him and the council. Eaton said he would, therefore, propose a resolution that would waive attorney-client privilege for opinions of the city attorney that do not relate to ongoing litigation. We have a right to know what advice council is being given and how they are acting on that advice, Eaton said.

As someone who attends many council meetings, Eaton said that many times councilmembers will indicate that an issue is going to be decided in a particular way – before the public hearing and the vote. The decision has already been made, he said, and they know how the vote is going to go, before members of the public take the podium and tell councilmembers what they want them to do. That’s not transparent government, but rather “pro forma” government – they go through the motions of committee meetings and public hearings and responding to FOIA requests, but decisions are made before that input.

As an example of the kind of change he would seek, Easton suggested that a council “committee of the whole” would meet during the off weeks between regular meetings, so that they would have open discussions in front of the public about what they were thinking.

Summary

Both candidates gave closing statements.

Eaton Sums Up

Eaton began by saying that Ann Arbor does not need dramatic change – we don’t need to demolish sections of neighborhoods in order to make “shiny new towers,” he said. What we need to do is maintain what we have. Ann Arbor has the third-worst roads in the state of Michigan, he said, but we have several million dollars in the road repair budget – it may go to the bridge or some other project. In any event, he said, the city has not been spending enough money in the last few years on road repair, and it showed.

The Allen’s Creek Watershed Group had reported that the water system was at near capacity, Eaton said– so if we continue to encourage more development, we will extend past the city’s ability to provide water and wastewater services. Instead of going on a “building binge” that would add to the already-high vacancy rate that the city has in rental and residential properties, we need to take care of our streets and bridges, our water system – the infrastructure that we can’t see. When the economy turns around, he suggested, we will then have the capacity to handle the new building that will take place.

We can’t build all of these projects and take care of our infrastructure – the state of the city now demonstrates, he said, that we can’t do both. He promised that he would focus on essential services during tight budget times, so that Ann Arbor would be in a position to grow when the time is right.

He concluded by asking audience members for their vote.

Teall Sums Up

Teall used her summary time to address some of the statements that Eaton had made through the forum.

First, she stressed that when a development goes into downtown Ann Arbor, the developer pays for any necessary capacity increases in the water and sewer systems that result.

On the subject of single-stream recycling and possible cross-contamination of material, she allowed that 10 years ago, when it was first introduced, the contamination issue was valid. Now, however, in the last few years, with improved technology, it was not. Environmental groups in the city supported the switch, she said.

As far as comparing Georgetown Mall to Michigan Inn, she said, Michigan Inn had been a huge problem for the city and for the city’s attorney, because the owner had not been at all cooperative. She said she was confident that the owner of Georgetown Mall would be cooperative.

On street lights, there would be no streets darkened as a result of the “downlighting” and noted that crime rates were down quite a bit in the last decade.

She thanked everyone for attending and thanked those who had supported her in elections and during her time in office. She said she’d worked hard with her Ward 4 colleague Marcia Higgins and with mayor John Hieftje “to create a solid foundation for the city – economically, socially, and environmentally.” It was essential, she said, to keep the leadership that would keep the city on course. She said that she hoped voters would “hire” her for two more years to keep the city’s ship sailing steady and strong as the flagship of the state of Michigan. We need the continuity that only the current leadership could provide, Teall said, and she asked the audience for their vote on Aug. 3.

Editor’s note: Tuesday, July 6 is the last day for residents to register to vote in the Aug. 3 primary. For information about your registration status or how to register, contact the city clerk at 734-794-6140 or cityclerk@a2gov.org, or go to the city clerk’s election website.

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

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

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

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

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

The Psychology of More is Better

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numbers as Their Own Reward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Activities versus Outcomes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total Waste and Apples-to-Oranges

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Psychology of Harder is Better

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Finances of Easier is Better

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

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

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

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

So what was the capital investment to be paid back?

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

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

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

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

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

Cart Coda

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

Tom McMurtrie, left, is the city's solid waste coordinator. Jim Frey, right, is CEO of Resource Recycling Systems, a consultant for the city on recycling.

The two separate resolutions correspond to the two facets of the new recycling system for Ann Arbor, which will be deployed in July 2010.

One resolution revised the contract with Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA) for curbside recycling pickup to reflect the single-stream character of the system. Residents will no longer place paper and containers in separate 11-gallon stackable totes to be hand-emptied by RAA drivers.  Instead, residents will put all their recyclable materials into a single rollable cart with a lid. Drivers will operate a robot arm from inside the truck to lift and tip the single cart’s recyclable contents into the truck.

The other resolution approved by the council authorized a contract with RecycleBank to implement an incentive program for residents, based on their participation in the recycling program and the average amount of materials recycled on their route.

Both the conversion to the new system and its associated incentive program came under criticism  during public commentary. During council deliberations it was the incentive program that was given the most scrutiny by councilmembers – with Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) voting against it. The contract with RAA was given unanimous support from the nine councilmembers who were present.

The arrangements with RAA for collection and with RecycleBank for the incentive program are separate contracts with separate entities – the single-stream system could be implemented without the incentive system. But it became apparent during council deliberations that the idea that the city council might opt for a single-stream system without the incentive program was not something city staff had planned for: The single-stream carts are already molded with labels “Earn rewards for recycling.” [Clarification: The authorization for the in-molded cart labels had not been made before the council approved the incentive contract.]

Background on City Council History with Single-Stream

Monday was not the first time the city council had contemplated the single-stream issue. The council heard a presentation at its Oct. 12, 2009 work session on the approach, including the incentive program for residents to set out their new single-stream carts for collection.

There was some initial confusion in the community about how the carts equipped with RFI (radio-frequency identification) tags would factor into the incentive program. Trucks will not weigh each individual cart as its contents are collected. The RFI scan simply measures participation of a household on any given day, and that participation is then assigned the average weight of all participating carts when the truck is weighed at the materials recovery facility (MRF).

At its Nov. 5, 2009 meeting, the council authorized upgrades necessary for the materials recovery facility (MRF) – some additional processing will be required to separate the materials, given that items will arrive mixed together. And at its Dec. 21, 2009 meeting, the council authorized the purchase of four new trucks, plus 33,000 carts equipped with RFI  chips.

The authorized total of capital investments – around $6 million – was made with reserves from the solid waste fund, which receives revenues from a dedicated millage. The increased volume of recycling expected from the single-stream system is expected to benefit the city’s balance sheet in two ways.

First, every ton that can be recycled instead of landfilled will save roughly $25 in tipping fees at Woodland Meadows in Wayne, Mich., where the city buries its trash. Second, the more recycled material that the city can collect, the more material it can sell on the recycled materials market. The estimated payback period for the investment is contingent on how the market for recycled materials plays out. The city is projecting that if the market stays in the mid-range for performance, the payback period for the investment will be about six years.

Who’s Who in Ann Arbor Recycling

At the podium at different times during the city council meeting were a range of people representing various organizations. Tom McMurtrie is the city’s solid waste coordinator. He was joined much of the time at the podium by Jim Frey, CEO of Resource Recycling Systems, a consulting firm.

John Getzloff is the representative of RecycleBank, which will have the contract to administer the incentive program. RecycleBank’s parent company is called RecycleRewards, and reference by speakers at the meeting varied between these two entities.

Melinda Uerling is the executive director of Recycle Ann Arbor – its current contract for dual-stream collection was amended Monday night to accommodate single-stream recycling collection. Recycle Ann Arbor is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ecology Center, an Ann Arbor nonprofit.

Single-Stream Public Commentary

Kathy Boris spoke against the adoption of a single-stream curbside recycling system. She said that the true business of the city government is to provide services, which included collection of recycled materials, and that the current system is providing good service. She contended that the current two-stream system is working, and that she was not aware that it was deficient. The cost savings associated with a single-stream system, she said, were offset by the need to purchase new cards, trucks, and add staff at the materials recovery facility. The current economic down time, she said, was the wrong time to undertake this system.

She cautioned the council that the point of recycling is not to achieve great volume, it’s to be able to sell what you have collected so it can be manufactured into products that people will buy. She warned that even with additional processing of the material that is mixed through the single-stream approach, you will still get contamination. She questioned whether it was in the best interest of the city to sacrifice quality in the interest of increased volume – it jeopardized the city’s ability to close the recycling loop by selling the material.

Rita Mitchell began her remarks on the single-stream recycling system by saying that she had found some money for the budget – she asked the council to vote no on the two resolutions before them concerning single-stream recycling [One resolution authorized a contract with Recycle Ann Arbor to perform the curbside collection, while the other authorized a contract with RecycleBank, the vendor that will be implementing the incentive program.]

Mitchell told the council that they would save up to $6 million by voting no. She suggested using the funds instead for police services and park maintenance. Mitchell acknowledged that adding additional types of plastics to the set of materials that are accepted is a good idea, but not one that is worth the $6 million investment. She also asked what would happen to the batteries and the oil, which are currently picked up curbside. With the $3-per-car entry fee now imposed at the city’s drop-off station, she warned that batteries and oil would wind up going to the landfill.

Mitchell cautioned that the incentives offered through RecycleBank could lead to increased consumption of unnecessary things, which was counter to the goals of recycling. She also objected to the roughly $200,000 annual cost to administer the program. She characterized the incentive program as a marketing project for tracking consumer behavior. Comparing RecycleBank’s slogan of “recycle, redeem, reward” to the one that’s more familiar to recyclers, she asked, “What happened to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle?’” She cautioned the council that they needed to look at the entire waste stream picture and that the goal needed to be a reduction both in solid waste and recycling.

Responding to the idea that the time has come for single-stream recycling, Glenn Thompson allowed that it had come … and gone. After careful study, he said, Berkeley, Calif. decided to retain its two-stream system. The University of Colorado had also recently concluded that the negatives associated with a single-stream system outweigh the benefits and had made a decision to stick with the two-stream system.

Those decisions, he said, were made this year, based on the quality of the resulting materials. Thompson reminded councilmembers that Ann Arbor has a 90% participation rate in curbside recycling for its two-stream system and has a 50% diversion rate. At the same time that the council was planning to spend $6 million on a speculative program, it was considering canceling loose-leaf collection, eliminating holiday tree collection, and had already imposed a $3 fee to enter the drop-off station. Thompson, like Mitchell, characterized the RecycleBank incentive program as a “marketing campaign.” Thompson called on the council to make this the watershed issue, the one where the council says no to an unnecessary “pet project.” He asked the council not to spend $6 million to benefit consultants and contractors.

Lou Glorie during public commentary on single-stream recycling.

[Later, during council deliberations, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) would question the connection that was made by some speakers during public commentary between the elimination of the loose-leaf collection and holiday tree pickup on the one hand, and the implementation of single-stream recycling on the other.]

Lou Glorie made her remarks during public commentary reserved time in the form of a skit in which she played both roles. It was a household conversation about recycling after conversion to a single-stream system. She included a mixing bowl as a prop, into which she dumped various materials. She then mixed them together, symbolic of what would happen to materials in a single-stream system.

RecycleBank’s Incentive Contract

Councilmembers had several areas of concern – from the 10-year length of the contract, to the need to have an incentive program at all. From the staff memo providing the rationale for the incentive program:

Based on data collected from comparable communities around the country, it is estimated that the single-stream program without RecycleBank would increase recycling rates about 28%, from 357 pounds per household per year to 457 pounds. This increase will be due to both the convenience and higher capacity of the new single-stream cart, as well as the additional materials that will be collected in the program. For example, all plastic bottles and tubs (except #3 and styrofoam) will be accepted under the new program.

With the RecycleBank incentive program, it is estimated that those same recycling rates will increase from 357 pounds to 752 pounds, or over 200%. The attached chart compares that 752 pound figure with other similar communities that are currently enrolled in the RecycleBank program.

Even at 752 pounds per household per year– a 200% increase in volume compared to current levels – Ann Arbor would be a fairly middle-of-the-pack RecycleBank client.

Here's how Ann Arbor's recycling performance is projected to stack up against other communities after implementation of the RecycleBank program. Ann Arbor's is the leftmost column. (Image links to higher resolution file.)

A chart supplied by RecycleBank shows five other cities that collect more than 800 pounds per household per year.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) led off council deliberations with a question about the length of the contract for RecycleBank: Why was it a 10-year contract for something that’s a new program?

Tom McMurtrie, the city’s solid waste coordinator, explained that it was based on the significant investment in technology and capital equipment required to install the RFID recognition equipment. Higgins also pointed out that the contract was for $200,000 per year over the course of the 10-year contract. She asked, “Why do we feel like we need to have this?” She put her question in the context of the already high rates of participation and recycling by Ann Arbor residents.

McMurtrie allowed that Ann Arbor residents did in fact have a high rate of participation. But he pointed out that communities like Rochester Hills and Westland, which had implemented single-stream cycling together with the incentive program associated with RecycleBank, now surpassed Ann Arbor residents – measured in terms of pounds of recycled material per household.

Jim Frey said that the length of the contract was related partly to the interest in cultivating the long-term loyalty of merchants who participated in the incentive program through coupon offerings. The idea was to use the incentive rewards to lower the cost of living for residents. The idea was also to have a longer-term relationship between residents and merchants.

In terms of Ann Arbor residents’ recycling performance, said Frey, they are no longer in the top 25% – “really not that great, to be honest with you.” The idea was to bring the performance, measured in terms of pounds per household, back into the top 90th percentile. He concluded by saying that Ann Arbor did have good participation rates, but that the performance was not as good as communities that had implemented incentives with RecycleBank.

Higgins asked if those other communities that had implemented RecycleBank, like Rochester Hills and Westland, had also converted to single-stream recycling. Frey confirmed that those two communities had implemented single-stream along with RecycleBank.

Higgins wanted to know if Ann Arbor’s recycling performance could be expected to bump up some anyway, just due to the implementation of the single-stream system, independently of any incentive program. She wanted to know what Rochester Hills’ and Westland’s performance in its two-stream system looked like before implementing the single-stream system, plus the RecycleBank incentive system.

Rochester Hills’ numbers for the two-stream curbside system were around a 30% participation rate, with around 150-200 pounds per household, Frey said. Now their participation rate was around 80%, with around 650 pounds per household. Westland, which previously had no curbside recycling, is now showing recycling levels of 800 pounds per household – roughly double the amount recycled in Ann Arbor, he said.

Higgins responded to an example from Frey of a community going from 30% to 80% participation through RecycleBank by pointing out Ann Arbor’s 80-90% participation rate with the two-stream system. Tom McMurtrie countered that it’s not just about participation but rather the amount of materials. Higgins asked when the 80-90% participation rate had last been measured for Ann Arbor in a two-stream curbside recycling program. McMurtrie told her it had been several years ago.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) focused on the idea that there will be an increase in recycling performance simply due to the conversion to a single-stream system, but there will be an additional increase from the RecycleBank incentive rewards system. McMurtrie confirmed that the conversion to single-stream itself – which included more kinds of materials (plastics), and increased volume of the curbside container – would result in some gains. But the incentive program, said McMurtrie, which really “gives it that shot in the arm.”

Noting that Ann Arbor was not the first to lead the way by implementing an incentive program like RecycleBank, Hohnke asked what that boost actually looked like. John Getzloff of RecycleBank reviewed the Westland and Rochester Hills program and added the example of Cherry Hill, N.J., which had increased its recycling levels from 600 pounds per year to 900 pounds per year. Getzloff told the council that RecycleBank operated in 20 states across the country, including large cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Chicago.

Frey suggested that in analyzing Ann Arbor’s situation, they estimated that 500 pounds of recycling per household could be attributed perhaps to just having a bigger container. There were many communities that had implemented single-stream recycling with carts only, and generally they achieved between 450 and 550 pounds of recycled materials per household. Hohnke then concluded from that discussion that the city could be confident there would be some additional boost from having the RecycleBank incentive program.

But he noted that the incentive program came with a cost – $200,000 per year. Against that cost had to be weighed the savings in tipping fees for the landfill. Asked Hohnke, “If you do the math, how do they compare?” Frey indicated that for every additional ton of material that was recycled, a savings of $25 would be realized. Through the sale of the material, there would be a benefit, as well. They projected that over the next five years, the incentive program would cover its costs.

In addition to that, Frey said, the value of the incentive rewards to each household would average around $250 worth of rewards a year. With 28,000 carts, that reflected a $7 million benefit to the community, he said. Hohnke concluded from this that implementing the incentive program over the course of five years would save the city money.

Higgins wanted to know what the ratio of renters to homeowners was in the communities that had been used for comparison, noting that there were 45% renters in Ann Arbor. Getzloff explained that the benefit of the rewards program came to the resident, not necessarily the property owner. If people moved within the city of Ann Arbor, they would take their accounts with them.

Higgins also came back to the fact that it was a very long contract. What if, two years into the contract, it is not working for the city, she wondered? McMurtrie replied that RecycleBank had been around since 2004 and therefore they had a history. Higgins came back with the point that it was not as long a history as the contract the council was being asked to sign. McMurtrie noted that the city had the ability by the terms of the contract not to fund the program.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) noted that on the chart that had been provided to councilmembers, curbside recycling levels increased dramatically but flattened out rather quickly over the five-year period that was estimated. Frey accounted for that by saying that there was a built-in conservatism in the estimates.

Smith asked about the possibility that utilization rates did not improve over time. Getzloff indicated  in that case, they would do additional outreach in the community. Frey pointed out that it could be a very targeted outreach because they would know exactly which households were not participating in the program. Smith elicited from Getzloff that the merchant partners for the incentive program would be a combination of national and local partners and that there would be a $540 cap on benefits to any one particular household. The cap is a way to prevent people from trying to cheat the system – by loading their carts with materials other than recyclables.

Mayor John Hieftje said he was intrigued by the incentive program and wondered if it would be possible for the community to use the coupons to support local nonprofits like Food Gatherers. Getzloff indicated that RecycleBank’s main focus was on their Green Schools program and other national charities. Support for local charities was not in the contract that the council was considering. Hieftje characterized the incentive program as a good investment.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked who collected the data on recycling tonnage. McMurtrie clarified that it’s collected by trucks and is then uploaded to RecycleBank’s system.

Kunselman reflected on the fact that the roughly $200,000 per year over the life of the 10-year contract represented $2 million. He established that the escape clause for not funding the program was slightly less than $200,000 a year – to cover the under-appreciated capital investment in the trucks. In light of that, Kunselman wondered why it was necessary to have a 10-year contract. Getzloff indicated that there were a variety of term lengths for RecycleBank contracts and that the best price came with the longest one – a 10-year contract.

Kunselman returned to the topic of Ann Arbor’s already high 80-90% participation rate. Based on the chart that had been handed out to councilmembers, Kunselman wanted to know how much of the doubling of recycled tonnage could be attributed just to the implementation of the single-stream system independently of the incentive program.

Frey went through a chart that showed how estimates of the current level of 5,084 tons – for single households in Ann Arbor – would rise to 10,708 tons in the second year of the program. Of those 5,624 extra tons, fully 4,201 were attributable to the incentive program.

Kunselman also questioned whether the city would in effect be paying twice for the educational efforts of both Recycle Ann Arbor and of RecycleBank. McMurtrie replied by saying that “We’re all in this together.” RecycleBank, McMurtrie indicated, is simply a new layer.

Kunselman then asked whether there were examples of RecycleBank in other college towns. Kunselman said that he was not sold on the idea that the city needed incentives as opposed to more education. Getzloff said that the incentive program educated people by keeping the idea of recycling foremost in their minds. Kunselman responded by saying that he had a difficult time believing that with a 80-90% participation rate by people who were conscientious about recycling, that a dramatic gain like Getzloff was describing could be possible.

Frey indicated that he’d been in the business of recycling almost 30 years and that communities spend millions of dollars in education, and that it’s different for each person and different for each household. What’s different about the incentive program, he said, is the common interest that it defines. He stressed that it works, and it’s amazingly effective.

Frey indicated that there were University of Michigan students who were really interested in doing a pre-test and post-test of the system. So Kunselman asked if it was possible to delay implementation of the incentive system for one or two years to see how well the conversion to single-stream worked with just the educational efforts of Recycle Ann Arbor.

McMurtrie responded by saying that the city council had already approved a purchase order for 33,000 carts and that the carts have in-molded labels saying that there would be rewards. Kunselman expressed his objection to the idea that they were putting advertising for RecycleBank on the carts. McMurtrie indicated that it was not advertising, but rather the phrase: “Earn rewards for recycling.”

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) clarified that the escape clause in the contract was designed to cover an investment that had not yet depreciated. He wanted to know how much that investment was. It boiled down to $20,000 per truck, plus installation of equipment at the materials recovery facility (MRF) – a computer that would download data to Recycle Ann Arbor. The cost of recruiting incentive rewards merchant partners, sending a team to educate people and funding the Green Schools program is just the cost of doing business, confirmed Getzloff.

Taylor then segued into a discussion of what exactly RecycleBank’s business model is. He wondered how they could offer $7 million in benefits based on a $200,000 per year payment from the city. Getzloff clarified that the $7 million reflected a co-spend, and that it was essentially costless to them. The parts of the incentive program that cost RecycleBank money are gift cards, movie tickets and the Green Schools program, Getzloff said. Taylor concluded from Getzloff’s remarks that the primary benefit to RecycleBank is from having the contract with the city. The heart of RecycleBank’s business model was the customer satisfaction of the city of Ann Arbor, Taylor said: “We are your customer.”

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) offered an amendment that stipulated that in three years after implementing the program, the city administrator would report back to the council on its effectiveness. Higgins’ amendment was unanimously approved.

Mayor John Hieftje asked McMurtrie if there was any reason to believe that the incentive program would cause people to buy more stuff. McMurtrie said he could not see that happening. He noted that there is a cap on how much you can earn from the rewards program. He stressed that the city’s first message was to reduce.

Outcome: The contract with RecycleBank for an incentive program for recycling in connection with the city’s new single-stream program was approved, with dissent from Stephen Kunselman.

Recycle Ann Arbor Contract

Also before the council was a contract revision with Recycle Ann Arbor, which currently collects recyclables curbside in a two-stream system. The key revisions to the contract are as follows:

The contract currently pays $19.30 to $102.58 per ton (depending on the annual tons), as well as $2.41 per service unit, with a total of 48,886 service units.

The proposed amendment modifies the provisions for compensation to RAA and extends the contract for an five additional years. The amendment will pay a revised rate of $18.74 to $30.00 per ton, as well as $3.25 per cart, which will replace the per service unit fee. The number of carts in the city will be lower than the number of service units because most multi-family service units will share carts. It is estimated that the new program will start with 32,800 recycle carts.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) led off the counci’s deliberations by reading a statement of support for the resolution from Margie Teall (Ward 4), who could not attend the council meeting.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) raised the issue of the connection that some of the public speakers had drawn between the implementation of a single-stream system and the possible elimination of the city’s loose-leaf collection program and its holiday tree drop-off. She asked for confirmation of her understanding that the leaf collection program was simply inefficient.

Tom McMurtrie, the city’s solid waste coordinator, confirmed Smith’s understanding of the loose-leaf collection system. Sue McCormick, public services area administrator, said the loose-leaf collection system was something the city had talked about for a number of years – it generated a very large number of complaints, due to the fact that there were challenges inherent in timing the collection to coincide with the dropping of leaves from trees in any given season.

The unpredictable first snowfall was also a factor, said McCormick. Raking leaves into the street for pickup – a key feature of the loose-leaf collection program – in areas where there was on-street parking was particularly problematic, McCormick said. [At the council's budget retreat in December 2009, McCormick had said about the loose-leaf collection program: "We cannot do it well."]

A second reason for eliminating the loose-leaf collection program, said McCormick, was to contain costs – the city expected around a $450,000 reduction from the solid waste millage revenues in the coming year. It would be somewhat cheaper – by about $100,000 per year – to move to a containerized system for leaf pickup. Smith drew out the fact that the city would continue to pick up leaves, but simply require that they be placed in paper bags or in one of the city’s compost carts. McCormick said that some residents had found it useful to place leaves in the compost carts over several weeks, instead of the all-at-once approach inherent in the loose-leaf collection program.

The rationale for the single-stream system, said McCormick, was to provide a higher degree of service with a payback period of around six years for the capital investment. Each of the programs – loose-leaf collection and single-stream – stood on their own, she said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said the initial approvals for the switch to single-stream recycling [authorization for the MRF upgrade, for example] had come in November 2009, before he served on the city council, so he wanted to get a clearer understanding of the general issue.

How do we have employees of a private vendor driving a city truck with a mechanical arm to pick up recycling, and also city workers driving city trucks with mechanical arms to pick up solid waste, Kunselman asked. He said he was a former driver for RAA and just wanted to get a clearer understanding. Kunselman also wanted to know: When did the contract actually end, given the five-year extension?

Tom McMurtrie, the city’s solid waste coordinator, said that until 1991, when he first began working for the city, the contract with RAA was sole-sourced. In 1991, the two-stream system was implemented – McMurtrie said he went out to bid for that system. In the time from 1991 to 2003, that contract was bid out three times. In 2003 they converted to the current performance-based contract, which ends in 2013. The extension for five years would put the end date in 2018.

The compensation for RAA drivers compared to city workers, McMurtrie said – once the better benefits for city workers were factored in – worked out roughly as follows: $19-20/hour for RAA drivers; $35/hour for city workers. McMurtrie said that the city was looking at the idea of privatizing the solid waste collection system as well. Melinda Uerling, executive director of RAA, confirmed McMurtrie’s information on lesser benefits associated with RRA driver compensation – there are health benefits, but no retirement system.

Melinda Uerling, executive director of Recycle Ann Arbor, and Tom McMurtrie, the city's solid waste coordinator.

Hohnke addressed the concern about the possibility that RecycleBank incentives would cause greater consumption, so he drew out the fact that RAA’s message continued to be to reduce, reuse, and recycle, with recycling one of a three-part strategy. Uerling confirmed that this was part of RAA’s message. They focused their message on recycling, she said, whereas RecycleBank would be focused on their rewards system.

Hohnke said there were financial, environmental, and quality-of-life benefits to the single-stream system and he would be supporting the move.

Prompted by Hieftje to explain the change in compensation in the RAA contract, McMurtie said that there was previously a rapid step-up in the per-ton compensation after 10,000 tons, with the idea that RAA would need to add staffing after that tonnage level. With the new single -stream system, he said, they will have already achieved those efficiencies, and it would not be necessary to ratchet up the compensation rate at such a fast rate.

Hieftje also elicited from Frey the fact that the market for recyclables was starting to recover and that Ann Arbor was able to move all of its collected material on the market.

As an example, Frey said, cardboard was in the low 100s [dollars per ton] before the market crashed, and now it was in the 150s.

Hieftje also elicited from McMurtrie and Frey the fact that batteries would no longer be collected curbside under the single-stream system. This is a function of the fact that drivers will no longer be climbing outside of the trucks to pick up batteries and oil.

Hieftje said that one of the advantages of the carts for recycling, as opposed to the two-stream totes, would be an improvement in the “clean look” of the city. He said that in his neighborhood, residents had started setting out their two-stream totes for collection that evening, and there was already cardboard that was starting to blow around.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) asked about the fact that around 35% of the materials that go through the MRF come from the city of Ann Arbor. The other 65% come from other communities. Frey indicated that in the future the city’s tons would amount to a greater percentage and that the merchant tons would need to find another facility. The MRF would continue to be a regional facility, Frey said, but the relative proportion of the city’s material would increase.

Kunselman asked if monthly data on the materials collected could be provided so that the city could “see how we’re doing.” McMurtrie indicated that more frequent reports on the data was an issue he’d been thinking about – currently the figures are reported annually as part of the city’s State of Our Environment Report.

At the conclusion of the deliberations, Kunselman and Hieftje engaged in a bit of recycling one-upmanship. Kunselman had previously cited his experience as an RAA driver. Hieftje cited his service on the RAA board. Hieftje then quoted an unnamed person who had helped to start RAA – to the effect that recycling needs to be as easy as putting out the trash. Kunselman noted that the unnamed person was his ecology student teacher at Pioneer High School – he’d been inspired by him at a very young age.

Outcome: The contract revision with Recycle Ann Arbor for curbside recycling was approved unanimously.

A Question To Be Recycled

Publication of this part of the meeting report was delayed while The Chronicle sought the answer to a question related to the incentive program – which is still not answered, but we plan to cycle back to it at a future date.

The question relates to how well Ann Arbor residents stack up against other communities that have a RecycleBank incentive program. While the 90% participation in Ann Arbor’s curbside program is high, Ann Arbor’s per-household figure of 357 pounds per year doesn’t stack up favorably with the more than 600 pounds that Rochester Hills residents are achieving.

What was not part of the council deliberations, or in the information that city staff provided to them, however, was the pounds-per-household data for material that goes into the landfill.

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

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

To see that getting the answer to the question is not just a matter of diversion rates, consider two communities, City A and City B. City A recycles 500 pounds per household and throws 1,000 pounds into the landfill. City B recycles 750 pounds per household and throws out 1,250 pounds into the landfill. City B outperforms City A in terms of its pounds recycled per household (750 is more than 500) and also outperforms City A in term of diversion rate (37.5% is better than 33%).

Yet there is some sense in which City B is doing a “better job” with resource management – there’s only 1,500 pounds of material carted away from the curb in City A, versus 2,000 pounds in City B.

From Rochester Hills we obtained the roughly one year’s worth of data since April 2009, when the city implemented its RecycleBank program: 6,054 tons of recycling, 16,261 tons of landfilled trash, and 6,397 tons of compost. Those amounts are collected from 19,350 households.

In the most recent article for The Chronicle written by Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, on the city’s environmental indicators, the breakdown for Ann Arbor’s residential waste only was 28% recycled, 46% landfilled and 26% composted.

Based purely on that breakdown, it looks like Ann Arbor’s performance on diversion rates might be better than Rochester Hills, even though its pounds-per-household recycling numbers are not as good. What we’re still checking is whether the Rochester Hills data we have and the numbers from Naud’s article really reflect an “apples-to-apples” comparison. To the extent that Rochester Hills data might include commercial waste, along with the residential, its diversion rate would be skewed lower.

Present: Stephen Rapundalo, Mike Anglin, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Stephen Kunselman, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Absent: Margie Teall, Sabra Briere.

Mayor John Hieftje announced that councilmember Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Margie Teall (Ward 4) were absent due to the flu. Later Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) had to leave the meeting somewhat early to tend to a sick family.

Next council meeting: April 5, 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Dominick Lanza is sworn in as the city of Ann Arbor’s new fire chief. (Photos by the writer.)

Part 1 of this report will not include single-stream recycling. Part 2 of the meeting report will focus on that issue, and will be somewhat delayed, in order to increase the possibility that an information request from the city for relevant data can be included in that article. [In this, we thus take a dual-stream approach.]

Aside from the single-stream recycling issue, the council addressed a range of other disparate topics.

The council undertook a wholesale replacement of the housing commission board, a move that will see the return to city service of recently-departed community services area administrator, Jayne Miller. She’s one of the new appointees to the housing commission board.

The council also approved a resolution urging Google to select Ann Arbor as a site for a fiber optic network. Accompanying that resolution was a public hearing during which seven people – two from Ypsilanti – spoke in support of the city’s bid, which also enjoys the support of the University of Michigan.

The city’s new fire chief, Dominick Lanza, was sworn in, though his start date comes a few days in the future – March 22, 2010.

Payment of $55,000 was authorized for a recently completed environmental study connected with a proposed runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport – a study that came in for sharp critique during public commentary. The council recently deleted the runway extension from its capital improvements plan.

The council approved an estimated total expenditure of $54,700 from its alternative transportation capital improvements fund as part of an agreement with the Michigan Dept. of Transportation that will make various improvements to about 9.8 miles worth of non-motorized facilities – bike lanes and signs. The agreement is necessary in order to qualify for $250,000 worth of federal stimulus money for the project, which has been awarded to the city.

In other – more motorized – business, the council postponed consideration of a possible ban on cell phone use while driving in the city. The ban would also apply to bicycling.

Still, cell phone use while driving will be impossible on several different city streets in the near future. The city council approved a raft of street closings for some of the city’s annual events.

Ban on Cell Phone Use While Driving

The possible postponement of consideration on the cell phone ban was fairly well-publicized, and only two people spoke at the hearing – both of them against the measure.

Mayor John Hieftje announced at the start of the public hearing that consideration of the ordinance would likely be postponed and told everyone that the public hearing would be continued to the meeting when the council considered the ordinance for a vote. Because it would be the same public hearing, the mayor said, people who spoke that night would not be allowed to speak at the subsequent meeting.

Cell Phone Ban: Public Hearing

One city resident told the council that he did not understand why the local city council was debating the issue, given that there were laws pending in the state legislature that were meant to address the same issue. Why there should be a 6-square-mile difference [an allusion to the city of Ann Arbor's rough geographic area] did not make any sense to him, he said. He pointed out that there are already state laws in place against distracted driving that were simply not enforced. He told the council that based on his review of some of the studies that had been provided to the council, he found the results to be inconclusive.

The resident contended that even Paul Green of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute – who had indicated in one of the reports that some restrictions on cell phone use were applicable – was not in favor of a blanket ban. [Green had appeared at the last meeting of the council to offer some expert analysis of the issue.] The speaker pointed to research gaps and characterized the various meta-analyses as “all over the map.” He allowed that there was a moderate impact on driving from cell phone use, but contended that the results were really all over the place.

From the Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors, Nancy Jo Merdzinski spoke against the measure on behalf of the board. First, she said that the issue was more appropriately addressed at the state level to ensure uniformity. Second, she said that a local ordinance prohibiting cell phone use while driving would be perceived as unfriendly and unwelcoming. Finally, the board felt it would have a negative impact on economic development, she said.

Cell Phone Ban: Council Deliberations

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) led off discussion by saying that the conversation stimulated by the proposed ordinance had now focused on the data – there was a great deal of data, he said. He stated that it was his view that a little more time to review the data would be useful, and moved to postpone the resolution.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) inquired whether there would be substantive changes in the ordinance when it eventually came back before the council. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) indicated to Higgins that the modifications were being undertaken by the city attorney’s office, and they had to do with two-way radios. The ordinance language already accommodated amateur radio operators, he explained, and there was an interest in making sure that city workers and Ann Arbor Transportation Authority workers would also be accommodated.

Stephen Rapundalo uses a hands-free phone (in his right ear), but plugs in his laptop for power at the start of the council meeting.

Rapundalo stated that he did not want to have to take the resolution back to an additional first reading. [The resolution has already been returned to a first reading one time, so what Rapundalo is hoping to avoid is the need to hear the resolution as a first reading for the third time.] Rapundalo said that the revisions were not going to change the substance of the ordinance.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) responded to a point that had been made during the public commentary about legislation that was currently pending at the state level. Derezinski acknowledged that there was a state-level legislation pending, but contending that none of that legislation is preemptive – it does not preclude a local municipality from authorizing its own ordinance. He also pointed out that other communities in Michigan have already enacted such ordinances.

[Senate Bill 468 contains a clause that allows local municipalities to pass and enforce ordinances on cell phones and driving, but only if those ordinances are substantially the same as SB 468: "(4) This section supersedes all local ordinances regulating the use of a communication device while operating a motor vehicle in motion on a highway or street, except that a unit of local government may adopt an ordinance or enforce an existing ordinance substantially corresponding to this section." ]

Outcome: The postponement of the ban on cell phone use while driving was unanimously approved, with dissent from Higgins.

Google Fiber

Several people spoke at the public hearing on the council’s resolution urging Google to select Ann Arbor as a test site for a fiber-optic network. The deadline for community applications is March 26. Two of the speakers at the hearing, who all expressed support for selection of Ann Arbor is a test location, were from Ypsilanti, a city directly east of Ann Arbor.

Google Fiber: Public Hearing

Steve Pierce introduced himself as a resident of Ypsilanti and co-founder of Wireless Ypsi. He told the council that he was excited that Ann Arbor was making a proposal and characterized it as good for the region. Pierce said that we need to change the way we look at telecommunications policy. He congratulated councilmembers and the staff members who had worked on the proposal.

Washtenaw Community College’s chief information officer, Amin Ladha, applauded the city’s effort, especially in the current condition that Michigan is in. He said Google’s fiber network would encourage business investment and development. He told them that Washtenaw Community College would support the effort, because it was in the interest of the community.

Wes Vivian introduced himself as a decades-long telecommunications consultant, and told the council that for the last 15-20 years it’s been clear that either the telephone companies will migrate to fiber-optic networks or face domination by cable television companies. That process has begun, he said – AT&T has installed fiber in many communities.

Wes Vivian told the council they needed to start thinking about how to implement a fiber-optic network, even if Google did not select Ann Arbor as a test site.

If Google “coughs up the money” that’s great, Vivian said, but we need to find a way to implement this anyway – even if Google decides not select Ann Arbor as a test site. Fiber, he said, was part of the necessary infrastructure of a city – like a street. It wasn’t necessary to provide a system, he said, but just a hole in the ground or a hole in the air.

Dominic Serra of the Southfield firm Internet 123 told the council that they may have heard about his company’s connection with 20/20 Communications in a newspaper story over the weekend. He told them that Internet 123 owned around 750 miles of fiber network in Michigan, and that they were supporting Ann Arbor’s proposal to Google. He told them that if there’s anything they can do, Internet 123 was at the city’s disposal – they are 100% behind the effort.

Brian Robb told the council that he was speaking for himself, not as an Ypsilanti city council member – he supported the Google fiber effort. He told them he would be bringing a resolution before the Ypsilanti city council reflecting that.

Amy Mah told the council that she was really excited about this plan, as were friends of hers who did not live in Ann Arbor.

Chris Leeder, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan School of Information, told the council that there was a great deal of excitement among UM students and in his department in particular.

Google Fiber: Council Deliberations

Before the council was a resolution that urged Google to choose Ann Arbor as a location for a test of a fiber-optic system that would include fiber to the home (FTTH) – offered to residents at a competitive rate.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) gave background on the request for information that Google had issued, describing the data capacity of the fiber-optic system as one gigabit per second, or roughly 100 times as fast as the typical currently-available Internet service. The proposal that the city was putting together, Taylor said, was a joint effort between the city of Ann Arbor and University of Michigan. The partnership was intended to make Ann Arbor’s response as strong and as powerful as it can be.

One of the main criteria that Google will be using to choose a location, explained Taylor, was the ease and efficiency of implementation in their chosen test site. It was in that context, he said, that the council was offering their resolution. He pointed out that to the original sponsors of the resolution, four other councilmembers had asked to be added: Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), Mike Anglin (Ward 5), and Margie Teall (Ward 4). [The original sponsors were Taylor, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), mayor John Hieftje and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2).]

The part of the resolution that speaks to ease and efficiency of implementation is the following clause, which Taylor read aloud: “RESOLVED, That if so selected, the Ann Arbor City Council shall direct City Staff to take all lawful measures to expedite and accommodate the safe and efficient installation of the Google FTTH network;”

Taylor concluded his remarks by noting that the city’s response will stand on its own, but that Google is interested in the community response to the proposal, as well. He directed people to visit a2fiber.com where they can find information about nominating the city of Ann Arbor, becoming Facebook fans – there are more than 11,000 fans at this point– following the proposal on Twitter, and creating videos for YouTube.

Hohnke thanked Taylor for his work, as well as the city and university staff for preparing the application. He cited the effort as a good example of the city and the university working together. He said that Ann Arbor was well-positioned to make its proposal. He encouraged people to visit the a2fiber.com website at the currently “slow, crawling pace of 10 megabits per second.” Hieftje wrapped up remarks at the council table by noting that in his travels through the city, he’d noticed a great amount of excitement about the Google fiber initiative.

Outcome: The council unanimously passed the resolution urging Google to choose Ann Arbor as a test location for its fiber-optic network.

Housing Commission Board Replacement

Before the council was a wholesale replacement of the city’s housing commission board. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), the council’s liaison to the housing commission board, reminded his colleagues of a January work session on the housing commission. He reminded them that the “marching orders” for the consultant who had been hired several months ago were to consider all options. [Chronicle coverage: "Housing Commission Reorganizes"]

That included everything from spinning off the housing commission entirely to developing an even closer relationship between the city and the housing commission. Over the last few months, Derezinski said, it had become clear that changes needed to be made at the level of leadership and governance. He allowed that an interim director had made a substantial difference at the level of managment, but that on the board there was a need for leadership and vision.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked how the council could be sure that the new board would not also have difficulty with their decisions, the same way that the current board did. He also asked how much support the city was thinking of providing to the Ann Arbor housing commission.

City administrator Roger Fraser responded to Kunselman by reminding the council of the report that had been made to them in January 2010 – that had been a forecast of required financial support. The housing commission needed to think about ways to generate more money than they were getting from HUD, said Fraser, referring to the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.

The problem was that they were not imagining a future with anything except HUD dollars. The goal of the reconfiguration of the housing commission, he said, was to be able to position the commission to seek grants, in addition to HUD funding. That would require leadership on the board. The city would be asked for around $135,000 to carry the housing commission for one year while that transition took place.

Fraser then listed out the members of the newly constituted board that the council was being asked to appoint:

• Mark McDonald – a property manager for large multifamily residences who understood issues of maintenance and customer care;
• Jayne Miller – who spent the last two years of her service to the city of Ann Arbor as community services area administrator, investigating issues associated with the housing commission, and who had expressed an interest in finding a way to continue her connectedness to the board even after leaving employment with the city. [Miller now heads up the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority.]
• Marta Manildi – who has been on the board since last September and has not yet had an opportunity to have an impact.
• Deborah Gibson –  a resident commissioner currently on the board, who’ll be reappointed to a one-month term. They’ll be canvassing for a replacement.

Asked by Anglin whether the interim executive director, Marge Novak, would remain as a permanent executive director, Fraser indicated that this was one of the decisions that the housing commission board needs to make but has been unable to make.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the replacement of the housing commission board.

Fire Chief Appointment

The theme of fire department services was first introduced at the meeting by Mike Anglin (Ward 5), who reported a recent positive personal experience. He’d called 911 in connection with a medical emergency on behalf of a woman with shortness of breath. He reported that the fire department arrived within three minutes, followed by the rescue squad. “That’s what we pay for,” he said. Anglin cited that kind of fast 911 service is one of the benefits of living in a city, as opposed to out in the townships.

City clerk Jackie Beaudry gets some signatures from Dominick Lanza. She had just administered the oath of office to Lansza, the city’s new fire chief.

The fire chief was not present for the actual appointment – it was later explained that his belongings had arrived with the moving van from Tennessee right around the time the council meeting started. He was able to join the council for his swearing in later in the meeting.

In introducing Dominick Lanza, the newly-appointed fire chief, Fraser said he was delighted – “you don’t know how delighted” – that he was able to announce Lanza’s selection and appointment as fire chief. Lanza served for 33 years in the Fort Lauderdale area as a firefighter and as an assistant commander in an organization that was actually a part of the sheriff’s department. Since 2007, he has been retired in Tennessee, but retirement did not fit him very well. “If you’ll shake his hand, I’d really appreciate it,” Fraser said.

Outcome: Lanza was appointed by a unanimous council vote and sworn in as new fire chief for the city of Ann Arbor.

From the March 4, 2010 offer letter sent to Dominick Lanza, the terms of his employment are as follows:

1. Position – Fire Chief – Exempt Professional Position #403390, Level 2
2. Salary – $ 108,000/year, paid bi-weekly
3. Vehicle Allowance – $400/month
4. Cell Phone Stipend $83/month plus the Data standard plan at: $53/month
5. Date of Employment – March 22, 2010 (Tentative)
6. Medical Insurance & Other City Sponsored Benefit Plans: Your coverage under such plans will become effective on your date of hire. A benefits summary is included with this letter. A full explanation of benefits will be explained once you start your employment with the City.

Environmental Assessment on Runway Extension

Before the council was the authorization for payment of a $55,000 cost for an environmental assessment associated with a possible extension of the runway at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. The council recently deleted the runway extension from its capital improvements plan.

EA on Runway Extension: Public Commentary

During public commentary reserved time, Andrew McGill described an environmental assessment study – which  had been conducted in connection with a possible extension and shift of a runway at the Ann Arbor municipal airport –  as “deeply flawed.” He cautioned councilmembers that “you may want to actually hold your noses” in receiving the report, though he acknowledged that the study had been completed and that they needed to pay for it. He described the report as unprofessional, saying that it did not draw on any academic or environmental expertise and that it was not possible to extract correct conclusions made by the report from the data included in it. The consultant on the study, JJR, refused to contact the author of the major FAA study on bird strikes, contending it was “irrelevant,” McGill said.

In the study, McGill continued, there are 38 species of birds identified, but it does not mention any Canadian geese. He pointed out that there are goose-crossing signs in the immediate vicinity of the airport. He suggested that the reason for the omission was that the FAA becomes alarmed at any mention of Canadian geese in such a report. He reminded the council that it was a Canada goose that brought down Sully’s plane. [The reference is to Chesley Sullenberger – "Sully" – the pilot of the US Airways plane that crash-landed on the Hudson River over a year ago.] McGill asked the council to contemplate what they would do with the report now that they are paying for it. He suggested that they should simply throw it out.

EA on Runway Extension: Council Deliberations

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) began council deliberations by asking the Ann Arbor municipal airport manager, Matt Kulhanek, if it was true, as McGill had contended, that there was no mention of geese, and if so, why not.

Kulhanek clarified that the list of 30 birds in the report were species of birds in the vicinity that were endangered. Christoper Taylor (Ward 3) confirmed with Kulhanek that the absence of geese in the report was because the report did not seek to characterize which birds were in the vicinity of the airport, but rather which birds that are endangered are in the vicinity of the airport.

Outcome: The authorization for the funds to pay for the study was passed unanimously.

Sewage Bonds

Before the council was an ordinance authorizing issuance and sale of sewage disposal system revenue bonds to the Michigan Municipal Bond Authority in the amount of $1.32 million. By way of background, there’s a difference between the city’s stormwater system – into which the street drains flow – and its sanitary sewer system, into which toilets flush.

Any rainwater that is directed into the sanitary sewer system through footing drains represents an unnecessary load on the sanitary system, because that water does not require treatment, but gets treated just the same. In the past, increased flow to the sanitary sewer during storms has resulted in the backup of sewage in homeowners’ basements. The city has a program in place to systematically disconnect footing drains from the sanitary sewage system. [Background on the footing drain disconnect program: "Drain Disconnect Time For Homeowners"]

On Monday night, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) had three questions concerning the issuance of the bonds. First, he wondered whether it was reasonable to tap some of the $56 million in cash reserves in the sewer fund rather than to issue the bonds. Tom Crawford, the city’s chief financial officer, pointed out that the bonds came with a special, low rate through a state revolving fund. It’s part of a program the city has for the drain disconnect program.

Sue McCormick, public services area administrator, pointed out that the city was undertaking an unprecedented capital project with the replacement of its wastewater treatment plant. The replacement of the solids-handling facility construction had a price tag of around $42 million, she said, and reconstructing half the liquids-handling facility amounted to another $70 million, she added.

While the cash balance in the sewer fund looked large, she said that was simply the result of reserving incrementally over the years for this major capital project. That balance had been achieved through incremental 3-4% rate increases. Prompted by Hieftje, McCormick confirmed that the original wastewater treatment plant had been built in the 1930s and that around $40 million had been saved towards the replacement project.

Anglin also had a question about whether bond fees would be assessed by the city. McCormick clarified that bond fees are not a project-allowable expense when the city bonds through state.

She also confirmed for Anglin that for this project, none of the funds would go to the city’s Percent for Art program.

City administrator Roger Fraser offered the further clarification that the bonds in question that night supported footing drain disconnection – not construction of the wastewater treatment plant – and that the nature of the work precludes any installation of art.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked how many footing drain disconnects had been performed so far. McCormick said she did not know off the top of her head but that she could get that information for Higgins.

In general terms, Higgins said the city had started work in the southwest part of the city and had completed much of that work, as well as some work in the northeast areas. And McCormick indicated that the city would continue on a priority basis with homes in the original five study areas where there had been basement backups of sewage. She said the city was not done yet.

Another point McCormick made was that the city was under a consent order from the state to remove a certain amount of stormwater flow from the sanitary sewer system. She also said it was a standing policy of the city council that if additional connections to the system were allowed for new construction, then that new construction was required to mitigate their peak load connection by 125% of the added load to the system. Finally, she said, the point of the footing drain disconnection program was to recover capacity and affordability to make sure that only the water that needed to be treated was actually treated.

Fraser added that the sewage system has a limit, but demand continues to grow. Considering the desire – at least in some minds in the community, he allowed – for the city to grow its population, it was important to maximize the capacity of the system. Part of maximizing the capacity includes removing water from the system that does not, in fact, need to be treated.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the authorization of the issuance of the sewage disposal system bonds.

Liquor License

The council approved issuance of a downtown development district liquor license for Tomukun Noodle Bar. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), who chairs the council’s liquor committee, noted that the city council had already approved the issuance of the license, but that a new reviewer at the MLCC did not care for some of the wording and that’s why it had been returned to the council. The wording issue had been addressed, said Rapundalo.

Outcome: The liquor license for Tomukun Noodle Bar was unanimously approved.

Golf Task Force

The council reappointed members of the city’s golf task force – Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) indicated that March 1 had become the annual renewal date for the task force. This year there were some minor changes to the makeup of the task force, made in response to some neighborhood groups who had wanted a role on it, he reported. To that end, a spot for a resident neighbor had been added. One spot for someone with golf expertise had been reduced – that still left two people on the task force with familiarity with golf operations and with golf course design.

Asked by Mike Anglin (Ward 5) to clarify what the task force did, Rapundalo clarified that the task force looked at both of the city’s golf courses – Leslie Golf Course and Huron Hills Golf Course – and that their purview included both marketing as well as fee structures for the two courses. The overall goal of the task force was to try to reduce the amount of general fund support that the two courses required. The next meeting of the task force, Rapundalo indicated, would focus on the budget and in particular the possibility of a public-private partnership for the Huron Hills course.

Members of the golf task force will be Stephen Rapundalo (city councilmember), Julie Grand (park advisory commission member), Doug Davis (current commercial operations expert), Bill Newcomb (Ann Arbor citizen with demonstrated golf operations expertise), Ed Walsh (Ann Arbor citizen with demonstrated golf operations expertise), Steven Rodriguez (Ann Arbor citizen with group golf play experience), Barbara Jo Smith (at-large Ann Arbor golf courses patron), and John Stetz (Ann Arbor citizen and member of a neighborhood association adjoining a golf course).

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the renewed and new appointments to the golf task force.

As a part of his communications to the council, city administrator Roger Fraser, announced that the new parks and recreation activities guide has now been published. The Huron Hills Golf Course front seven holes opened last week and Leslie Golf Course is set to open on March 25.

Non-motorized System Expansion Project

The council had before it a proposal to authorize $54,700 from its alternative transportation capital improvements fund as part of an agreement with the Michigan Dept. of Transportation that will make various improvements to around 9.8 miles worth of non-motorized facilities – bike lanes and signs. The agreement is necessary in order to qualify for $250,000 worth of federal stimulus money for the project, which has been awarded to the city.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) wanted to know where the process stood. Were construction drawings already done? Pat Cawley, with the city’s project management department, indicated that the bids had been opened last week. The project had begun life in 2007 as one that was not federally funded. When the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act stimulus funds became available, he said, the city was able to push it forward as a shovel-ready project.

Smith wanted to know if there were any opportunities for changes to the plans or for public engagement.

Cawley said there was some room for changes – given the three-year history of the project, some of the information on which the construction plans had been based could be out of date, and accommodation would need to be made. On public engagement, he said there had been a meeting back in 2007, and that now the city would focus on providing information to the community. He said that a suggestion from the Greenway Conservancy had been incorporated to include signage about the greenway along Ashley and First streets.

Outcome: The non-motorized improvements were unanimously approved.

Street Closures

The council authorized a number of street closures.

• March 20, 2010: A2A3 Box Cart Race/Soap Box Derby [S. University from Oxford to Walnut, and Linden from S. University to Geddes] [Chronicle coverage of last year's event: "Box Cars Zoom Down South University"]
• April 3, 2010: Monroe Street Fair [Monroe Street between Oakland and Tappan]
• April 8, 2010: Take Back The Night (Rally and March) S. University Ave. from Church Street to S. State Street; S. State Street from S. University Ave. to E. Madison Street; E. Madison Street from S. State Street to Thompson Street; Thompson Street from E. Madison Street to E. William Street; E. William Street from Thompson Street to S. Fourth Ave.; S. Fourth Ave. from E. William Street to E. Liberty Street; E. Liberty Street from S. Fourth Ave. to S. State Street; and S. State Street from E. Liberty Street to the UM Diag ]
• April 11, 2010: FestiFools [S. Main Street from William Street to Washington Street; and Liberty Street from Ashley Street to South Fourth Avenue] [Chronicle coverage of last year's event: "Favorite Fools"]
• May 2, 2010: Burns Park Run [Baldwin Avenue from Wells Street to Cambridge Road; Cambridge Road from Baldwin Avenue to Martin Place; Martin Place from Cambridge Road to Wells Street; Wells Street from Martin Place to Lincoln Avenue; Lincoln Avenue from Wells Street to Cambridge Road; Cambridge Road from Lincoln Avenue to S. Forest Avenue; S. Forest Avenue from Cambridge Road to Granger Avenue; Granger Avenue from S. Forest Avenue to Baldwin Avenue; Baldwin Avenue from Granger Avenue to Brooklyn Avenue; Brooklyn Avenue from Baldwin Avenue to Lincoln Avenue; Lincoln Avenue from Brooklyn Avenue to Shadford Road; Shadford Road from Lincoln Avenue to Woodside Road; Woodside Road from Shadford Road to Scottwood Avenue; Scottwood Avenue from Woodside Road to Norway Road; Norway Road from Scottwood Avenue to Ferdon Road; Ferdon Road from Norway Road to Wells Street; and Wells Street from Ferdon Road to Baldwin Avenue]
• June 4-5, 2010: Annual African-American Downtown Festival [East Ann Street from North Main Street to the Hands On Museum driveway near North Fifth Avenue (local traffic access maintained) and North Fourth Avenue from Catherine Street to East Huron Street]

Other Public Commentary

Several people spoke during public commentary at the meeting, either at the beginning of the meeting when time must be reserved in advance, or at the end of the meeting, when no reservation is necessary.

Musical Interlude

During public commentary reserved time, Libby Hunter offered a song, as she has on several previous occasions. She suggested that it was a very old melody that some people might recognize. ["Blessed Assurance" composed by Phoebe P. Knapp, 1839-1908.] The lyrics were a critical comment on the process that the city uses to make spending decisions.

Main Street BIZ

Ed Shaffran appeared during public commentary reserved time as chair of the Main Street BIZ initiative to thank the council for their support. He reported that the vote among property owners in the proposed district had resulted in greater than 95% support. He told the council that it was their support that allowed the group to go forward with a proposal. He specifically thanked mayor John Hieftje, city clerk Jackie Beaudry, Kevin McDonald from the city attorney’s office, and city assessor David Petrak. Shaffran closed his remarks by summarizing the goal of the new business district: “We’re willing to tax ourselves to make downtown look better.”

Homelessness

Lily Au told the council that their resolutions that invested $245,000 to help low-income people find housing was a good step. [The resolutions were passed without comment from the council.] She alerted them to the fact that Camp Take Notice, which is a homeless tent city located near the intersection of Ann Arbor-Saline Road and I-94, had to rebuild the camp after a recent snowfall.

Au told the council that the Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT) had given the campers a warning that they needed to depart the premises within 30 days or they would be evicted. That was three weeks ago, she said. She said people often ask why those people don’t simply go to the Delonis Center. She told the council that there is not enough accommodation there. She also noted that the rotating warming shelter that is operated by the faith community would end at the end of March. She described a pattern that would repeat itself: the police would evict the campers, they would hide, and build again.

Palestine

Marcia Federbush criticized the council’s decision, made in December 2009, to appoint Neal Elyakin as a member of the city’s human rights commission. She cited Elyakin’s membership in the Friends of the Israeli Defense forces as incompatible to his membership on the city’s human rights commission. For the road commission, she allowed it would not be an issue, but for the human rights commission, which dealt specifically with these kind of issues, it was relevant. It was the Israeli Defense Forces, Federbush said, that had brought the massacre of 1,400 in Gaza a little over a year ago, using pilotless drones, and white phosphorus. About Elyakin, she contended that “When the world sees yellow, he insists it’s blue.”

Henry Herskovitz began his remarks by saying that he felt most people knew who he was and what he did: exercise his First Amendment rights by holding signs on public sidewalks. He told the council that he actually did not enjoy doing that. On the contrary, he rather disliked it. He did not like being out in the open exposed, even to the point that he did not like waiting for buses. The bus drivers can see him, but he cannot see them. He said that he had previously sworn that he would never do what he’d seen other peace activists do.

But that had changed 10 years ago when he had accompanied a friend on a trip to Iraq to help deliver medical textbooks. In the course of that trip he visited a hospital in Basra in southern Iraq. The hospitals, he reported, were in terrible condition – due to sanctions imposed at the time by the United States.

In the hospital, Herskovitz said, there was a “terrorist” – and he knew that the man was a “terrorist” because he matched the various portrayals that he had seen in mainstream media. Herskovitz said that he started to take pictures of the boy in a hospital bed next to the “terrorist” and that the “terrorist” was crying. Herskovitz said he realized then that the man was the dying boy’s father and that he was crying over the fact his dying son was being used as a photo opportunity. Herskovitz said he came back to Ann Arbor 10 years ago and picked up a sign.

Mid-Block Crosswalk

Kathy Griswold spoke, as she has on many previous occasions, about the issue of moving a crosswalk near King Elementary School from its mid-block location to a four-way stop intersection. She kidded the council, following up on the council discussion of endangered species of birds near the airport, by alluding to a duck and her ducklings hosted at the school – they might try to use the crosswalk mid-block and they should be protected. Switching to a more serious tone, Griswold told the council that she’d been using CTN video equipment to record activity at the crosswalk – after taking the CTN training to use the equipment.

Griswold said that at this point she was waiting for a response from the city to her request that a meeting be held. She described how she’d received a call from a neighbor, which she’d relay to the mayor, who’d handed off the issue to the ward’s two councilmembers, Tony Derezinski and Stephen Rapundalo. She described the situation as a “communications traffic circle.”

City Finances

Brad Mikus called the council’s attention to the pension fund report attached to their information packet. He called the $80 million loss on investments in the report “a big number.” He also called the council’s attention to the fact that according to the report, 10% of the funds are to be invested in alternative assets: hedge funds, timber, and high yield fixed income instruments. Focusing on the phrase “high yield fixed income instruments,” Mikus characterized them as “junk bonds.”

Mikus also called the council’s attention to a number of receivables that are over two years old, including one from SBC for around $100,000. That was money sitting there that could be collected, he suggested.

Council Communications and Updates

In her communications from council, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) suggested that the council look at the scheduling of their July 19 meeting and consider shifting it to July 20. The Townie Street party is scheduled for July 19, and she thought that many council members would like to attend.

Smith also alerted the community that the U.S. Census forms would be delivered in the next few days and she encouraged everyone to fill out the form. It was a secure process, she assured everyone.

Mayor John Hieftje reported that over the weekend he attended the funeral service of a former mayor of Ann Arbor – Sam Eldersfeld Eldersveld, who was mayor from 1957-1959. Hieftje described Eldersfeld as having built the University of Michigan political science department. At the St. Andrews service, Hieftje said, there were three former mayors and a lot of nice memorabilia from city history on display.

Stephen Rapundalo, during his communications, announced that on Friday at 9 a.m. Terumo‘s Ann Arbor campus would be having a dedication ceremony to celebrate the firm’s growth. He encouraged council members to attend, saying that Gov. Jennifer Granholm and representatives from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. would be on hand.

City administrator Roger Fraser announced that at their April 19, 2010 city meeting, the council would be presented with the proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. However, at the first meeting in April they would receive a hard copy of the budget. At the April 12, 2010  work session, said Fraser, the content of the budget book would be walked through and representatives of Ann Arbor SPARK and the Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA) would be on hand to answer any questions.

The board of review, Fraser said, has begun its work on tax assessment appeals. They have expanded the process to include two boards, he reminded the council, which can process appeals simultaneously. The additional capacity is needed to process the increased number of appeals.

Street sweeping, Fraser also announced, has resumed for the season. “It’s that time of year.”

As an update on the municipal center construction going on along Fifth Avenue just outside of city hall, Fraser reported that demolition in the basement of city hall resulted in some dust and smells in the building that affected first-floor workers, and that they had been temporarily relocated. The new elevator tower on the west side of the existing city hall building would begin soon, he reported. That would result in a squaring off of the upside-down-cake appearance of the building on that side. Fraser said that if Phase 2 of the renovation plan were to ever be implemented, at that time the men’s and women’s bathrooms would be renovated.

Fraser announced that the city has reduced its number of temporary workers to the point that it is no longer cost-effective to have Manpower administer that operation. This will be brought back in-house.

In response to a question from Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Fraser explained that some, but not all of the temporary workers would be brought on as city employees.

Present: Stephen Rapundalo, Mike Anglin, , Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Stephen Kunselman, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Absent: Margie Teall, Sabra Briere.

Mayor John Hieftje announced that councilmember Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Margie Teall (Ward 4) were absent due to the flu. Later Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) had to leave the meeting somewhat early to tend to a sick family.

Next council meeting: April 5, 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Other agenda items receiving some discussion were the public hearing scheduled on the Google Fiber initiative, plus a contract revision for Recycle Ann Arbor to perform single-stream curbside recycling using automated carts.

Ban on Cell Phone Use While Driving

At its Feb. 16, 2010 meeting, the city council had given initial approval to a proposed city ordinance banning cell phone use while driving. That initial approval – at the ordinance’s first reading before the council– was followed by revisions to the ordinance that were numerous enough that it was presented again as a first reading at the council’s March 1, 2010 meeting. The council again gave the ordinance its preliminary stamp of approval.

On the agenda for Monday is the second reading of the ban on cell phone use while driving, together with a public hearing on the item.

But at the Sunday caucus, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) indicated that she’d heard from the ordinance’s sponsor, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), that it would likely be postponed – more revisions had been undertaken to the ordinance language. Mayor John Hieftje confirmed that he’d heard similar news from Christopher Taylor (Ward 3).

Asked if this might mean a third presentation of the ordinance to the council as a “first reading,” Hieftje allowed that it could mean that. He said he saw it as evidence that the process was working – the community was giving feedback on the proposed ordinance that was being incorporated into the language.

Asked if the council might consider – in lieu of passing a local ordinance – passing a resolution calling on the state legislature to take action on a cell phone ban, Hieftje allowed that this was a possibility. He also said that if the ordinance eventually failed to win council’s approval, that it would likely be based – for some councilmembers – on the fact that they see the issue as more appropriately addressed at the state level.

Briere, for her part, said she had a concern about the fact that the ordinance specified it was a primary offense – drivers could be pulled over for cell phone use specifically. Secondary offenses require some other additional reason for a driver to be pulled over. Resident Eppie Potts remarked that she figured if she were pulled over by the police, by the time the officer would approach the car she’d have put the cell phone down.

Resident Jack Eaton, who works as an attorney, indicated that he represented transit unions. Every transit union in the state, he said, has a rule against drivers using cell phones while driving. The difficulty, he said, is that enforcement becomes a he-said-she-said issue. How could a hands-free Bluetooth device be seen under long hair, for example?

Hieftje said he was concerned that when stopping motorists, looking for evidence of cell phone use was one more reason that police officers could use to look around in people’s cars.

Briere said she’d hate to think that we’d be sending police officers chasing after people using cell phones, while acknowledging that cell phone use is seen to be a genuine safety hazard by local traffic enforcement officers.

Briere elaborated on a statement from chief of police Barnett Jones, made at a recent city council meeting, that drivers using cell phones could currently be cited for careless driving, but that a cell phone ordinance would make things cleaner in a court of law. She said it would need to be shown that the cell phone was in use at the time of an accident, and that it would need to be demonstrated that such cell phone use caused the accident.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) noted that the use of various hand-held electronic devices would only proliferate. He cited a demonstration of voice-activated commands for such devices that he’d witnessed as two tech people had squared off – one with a voice-activated smart phone and the other without – as they’d tried to find the answer to the question he’d posed: When was Budweiser founded? The guy with the voice-activated device was faster.

Google Fiber

The city council is holding a public hearing Monday evening on the city’s proposal that Google choose Ann Arbor as a site for installation of a fiber-to-the-home network. The council will be considering a resolution urging Google to select Ann Arbor as a site and promising “to take all lawful measures to expedite and accommodate the safe and efficient installation of the Google FTTH network.”

Though the Google Fiber network has been widely discussed as cost-free, the language of Google’s request for information (RFI) specifies that homeowners would be offered Internet service “at a competitive price” and this is reflected in the city council resolution.

Asked what they would consider to be a “competitive” price, Hieftje, Briere and Anglin required some time to noodle through what they currently paid to Comcast for their high-speed access, plus TV and phone. Consensus put that number between $60 and $100.

Asked how many residents of Ann Arbor they thought would be adopters of fiber and at what price, councilmembers were not sure. Hieftje said that Ann Arbor was one the most wired communities in the world.

Hieftje reported that he’d been included on a conference call with someone in the governor’s office the previous Friday in the wake of Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s trip to California to lobby Google to choose a Michigan city as a location for their fiber network. Based on his understanding from that phone call, he said, Google’s goal is to see the federal government take the lead on installation of fiber networks – their initiative would be a pilot to demonstrate how successful it could be. In Google’s view, said Hieftje, fiber optic access to the Internet should be like a utility.

On the question of competitive price, resident Jack Eaton speculated that the actual dollar amount would be comparable to Comcast, but that the Google fiber network would compete on quality and speed of service.

With respect to the service, Briere said she’d heard from constituents that they were already at the point of needing the kind of bandwidth that fiber offered (100-times faster than typical cable service), even if many people were not. She said in the next decade, she thought that video conferencing via fiber networks [an extremely high-bandwidth application] would play an increasing role.

On the question of neighborhood reaction to any hardware that might need to be installed external to houses, Briere offered her view that in light of the potential benefit, the aesthetic concerns could come later, not now.

Single-Stream Recycling

Late last year, the city made several decisions setting in motion a switch to single-stream curbside collection of recyclable materials from the current two-tote system – one for paper and the other for containers. The council heard a presentation at its Oct. 12, 2009 work session on the approach, which will include incentives for residents to set out their new single-stream carts for collection.

At their Nov. 5, 2009 meeting, the council authorized upgrades necessary for the materials recovery facility (MRF), and at their Dec. 21, 2009 meeting, they authorized the purchase of four new trucks plus 33,000 carts equipped with RFI (radio-frequency identification) chips.

At the Sunday caucus, resident Eppie Potts contended that most people didn’t know anything about the new single-stream system, and that when she told people about it they were shocked. She said that she did not want to dump the containers, which she rinsed out, on top of the paper she collected, out of concern that it would contaminate the paper. This was something the single-stream system would do anyway.

Potts wondered if the old recycling totes could be recycled. Hieftje said he would get an answer for her on that. From The Chronicle’s report of the council’s Nov. 5, 2009 meeting: “The new carts will be available in June/July 2010. The old totes can be recycled.”

Potts questioned the amount of public money spent on the project, which included, she said, $1.4 million for the carts, $1.2 million for trucks, and $3.2 million for upgrades to the facility.

Hieftje told Potts that the payback on the investment was estimated to be around six years and that money from the city’s solid waste millage had been set aside incrementally to be able to pay for those investments.

On the subject of the solid waste millage, resident Jack Eaton put the investment in single-stream recycling in the context of the cost-cutting measures for the solid waste fund being contemplated in this year’s budget planning. Those measures include elimination of curbside holiday tree pickup, as well as elimination of loose leaf collection. [Chronicle coverage: "Budget Round 4: Lights, Streets, Grass"]

The benefits of single-stream recycling, contended Eaton, would still be there when the time came, even if its implementation were delayed. He wondered if it might not have been wiser to delay that implementation.

Briere responded to Eaton by noting that the cost savings of eliminating the leaf collection and holiday tree pickup were relatively small. The question to ask about single-stream recycling, she said, was not just what it costs, but rather also what Ann Arbor gains.

On the solid waste millage, however, Eaton suggested that now, when the city is short of cash, the solid waste millage rate could be reduced, instead of investing in a single-stream system. Eaton suggested that with a reduction in the solid waste millage, the city could make a stronger case to voters that they should approve a Headlee override – which would restore property taxes to their original rates, before the Headlee amendment rolled them back.

Recycling totes and a trash cart await collection in Ann Arbor. The totes will be replaced with bins similar to the blue trash cart in mid-2010. (Photo by The Chronicle.)

Although Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, is listed as the author of this piece, he received “a boxload of help” from Adrienne Marino, Tom McMurtrie, and Nancy Stone.

The SOE report is developed by the city’s environmental commission and designed as a citizen’s reference tool on environmental issues and as an atlas of the management strategies underway that are intended to conserve and protect our environment. The newest version of the report is organized around 10 environmental goals developed by the environmental commission and adopted by the city council in 2007. This installment focuses on responsible resource use.

All installments of the series are available here: Environmental Indicator Series.

With the closing of the 2009 holiday season, and many of us surrounded by lots of new “stuff” – including the associated boxes and packaging – and even a few of us with New Year’s resolutions to “simplify” our life in the coming new year, it seems like a good time to talk about all of the stuff we buy, use, reuse, recycle, and then throw out in Ann Arbor.

This year, coincidentally, is also the start of our 40th year of recycling in Ann Arbor, starting with a drop off station at Arborland in 1970, some curbside collection in 1978, and in 1991, an environmental bond that brought curbside collection to all Ann Arbor residents.

This installment of the series summarizes our environmental indicators on municipal solid waste (MSW) – the total amount of waste that is landfilled, composted, or recycled in our community.

Putting waste into a landfill has financial and environmental costs. So we look to recycling and composting rates as a measure of success, because recycling and composting divert waste from landfills. Recycling is also one of the least expensive ways for the city to reduce its carbon footprint. The energy used to recycle materials is typically far less than the energy used to create products from virgin materials.

Achieving our current goal of 60% diversion, and our ultimate goal – to produce zero waste – will require more hard work.

Overall, Ann Arbor diverts a large proportion of its total waste compared to other communities statewide as well as nationwide. We begin with a look at national and state patterns, before focusing on Ann Arbor’s indicators.

National Diversion Efforts

Let’s start by taking a look at the national level. The EPA reports that, “In 2008, Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash and recycled and composted 83 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 33.2 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.5 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.5 pounds per person per day.”

National municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling rates from 1960-2008. In green is the total tonnage recycled. In orange is the percent of the total stream that is recycled. The divergence of the graphs after 1990 means that even though total recycling has gone up, the U.S. has generated an even greater amount of waste.

(Source: USEPA, Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2008)

Overall in the U.S., 54% of total Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is discarded in landfills – the rest is recovered through recycling or combusted (i.e., burned) with some energy recovery. [Ann Arbor does not burn any of its waste.]

In the U.S., 54.2% of waste is discarded in landfills, 33.2% is recycled, and 12.6% is burned.

How does Michigan compare to the rest of the U.S.?

State Of Michigan’s Diversion Efforts

The following is taken from Expanding Recycling in Michigan, April 2006, a report prepared by Public Sector Consultants Inc. for Michigan Recycling Partnership:

Ironically, while Michigan is nationally recognized as a leader in conservation and environmental protection, the state is woefully behind its neighboring states and the nation in its MSW recycling efforts.

• Michigan’s recycling rate of 20 percent is lower than the other Great Lakes states (30 percent) and the U.S. (27 percent) averages.
• Michigan’s recycling rate decreased by 20 percent from 1994 to 2004, while every other state in the region had at least a marginal increase in recycling.
• The per capita recycling rate (0.38 tons/year/person) has remained almost stagnant and continues to be below the regional and national averages (0.44 and 0.46, respectively).
• Unlike many states, Michigan does not collect or require reporting of MSW recycling data; therefore, Michigan does not have the ability to measure the state’s recycling performance or its handling, collection, transport, and marketing of recyclable materials.
• Michigan’s recycling program is funded at a fraction of the level of other Great Lakes state programs and ranks 41st out of 48 states that reported their allocations for recycling.
• Only 37 percent of Michigan residents have access to curbside recycling, the lowest percentage of all the states in the region.
• Michigan has not invested in developing or sustaining markets for recycled materials, and some businesses have to import recycled materials from other states because of the inconsistency in local supplies.

So the Michigan story is pretty sad. A recent press release by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment reported on the decline in solid waste disposal in Michigan and the financial effects:

DEQ Interim Director Jim Sygo warned that the sharp decrease in solid waste disposal would impact the state’s ability to ensure that its waste stream was safe and protective of the environment.

“Michigan’s solid waste program is funded from a 21-cents-per-ton fee on solid waste disposed in Michigan landfills,” said Sygo. “This continued decline in disposal means fewer resources available to our department, and has serious implications for Michigan’s ability to continue the current level of permitting, inspections, and oversight of solid waste management in the state.”

Michigan’s 21-cents-per-ton fee is the lowest in the Great Lakes Region. Based on the capacity used during FY 2009, the reduction of waste disposed, and additional permitted landfill capacity, it is estimated that Michigan landfills have approximately 25 years of remaining disposal capacity.

Maybe it’s just me, but using Michigan land to store trash ought to be really expensive.

Ann Arbor’s Diversion Efforts

Here in Ann Arbor, the story is happier for a number of reasons. Most important is the millage that provides sustainable funding for residential and commercial recycling, including the infrastructure to collect, sort and process these materials for resale. That’s a millage that the city council can enact under state enabling legislation – it appears as “CITY REFUSE” on Ann Arbor property tax bills.

Ann Arbor also has a long history of public education by local government and nonprofits highlighting the benefits of recycling. The Ann Arbor recycling program started in 1970 with a grassroots effort that has continued to today. We have over a 90% participation rate in our single and multi-family recycling program.

Where do we want to be?

One of the city’s 10 environmental goals – responsible resource use – is to produce zero waste. Zero waste is an ambitious goal, but it effectively captures the idea that as a community we don’t want to be wasting resources. While we are not close to meeting the goal of zero waste, every five years we develop a solid waste plan for the city that sets intermediate targets. As we implement the solid waste plan, we move closer to meeting that larger goal.

The goals set in the most recent solid waste plan are:

Achieve a residential waste diversion rate of 60%, equivalent to 31,000 tons/year (for reference, the 1999/2000 recovery was 50%, equivalent to 26,000 tons/year), and an overall diversion goal (including the entire commercial sector) of 60%, equivalent to 40,200 tons/year for both residential and commercial locations.

Our residential waste diversion rate in 2008 was 54%.

In Ann Arbor 46% of solid waste is landfilled, 28% is recycled, and 26% is composted.

Overall we are doing very well compared to measures at the national and state levels. There are several indicators we can use as we look at our overall waste, composting, and recycling initiatives.

Total waste per capita

Landfilled Waste Per Capita

One measurement the city uses as an indicator is the amount of landfilled waste per capita: How much stuff are we each generating on average and how does that compare with some national average?

This number is calculated by weighing the contents of the solid waste residential trucks and dividing by the current census population (excluding the University of Michigan). Looking at the chart below, the amount of waste we are generating per person in Ann Arbor is pretty steady. The good news is that it is lower than the national average. The bad news is that our residential waste disposal is slowly going up instead of down.

Annual Waste Per Capita in Ann Arbor is significantly lower than the national average.

So Ann Arbor’s indicator for total waste per capita is green (our current state is pretty good), with a level arrow (we’re not getting better and not doing dramatically worse).

But this isn’t the whole story.

Looking at annual waste by pound includes all the solid waste we put out to the curb in trash carts. Ways to make our landfilled waste numbers drop include reducing waste at the source (by selecting products in recyclable packaging and purchasing items in bulk) and recycling and composting more.

It is possible to compost food scraps at home (or use your sink disposal) so that heavy organic material that really doesn’t belong in a landfill never makes it into the “waste” stream. In addition, the city expanded our seasonal composting cart collection program this year in fall 2009 – residents can now put uncooked fruits and vegetable food wastes into the compost carts.

Total amount landfilled

Total Landfilled Waste

We’ve already looked at the per-person numbers for landfilled waste. So now let’s take a look at the total amount of waste we landfill.

This is an important measure to look at because it quantifies the amount of material that is now a pure expense to the city and won’t provide any further value – that is, until the economics of mining landfills for materials starts to make sense.

These landfill tons include residential curbside, multi-family, and commercial locations. Data for 2002-2003 are estimated based on 2001 and 2004 data.

Ann Arbor's total amount of landfilled waste is more now than it was in the early 2000s.

This chart shows that we are landfilling less now – in the late 2000s – than we were in the late 1990s. And unfortunately, we are landfilling more than we were just a few years ago.

So Ann Arbor’s indicator for total amount landfilled is yellow (fair) with a downward arrow (we’re doing worse than before).

One thing to note is that landfilling in Michigan is incredibly cheap and not for very good reasons. The true cost of landfilling in Michigan is still pretty high when all of the costs are considered – especially the potential for contaminated groundwater and soils, methane creation, and transportation costs (most recycling facilities are much closer than the landfilling sites).

Past state legislators permitted so much landfill capacity that the beautiful state of Michigan has become a cheap dumping ground for dozens of states and Canada, because Michigan now has a huge over-supply of landfill space. Competition among huge landfills makes the cost for burying trash – the tipping fee – one of the lowest in the U.S.

Even though it makes no sense for Toronto to ship trash to Michigan, Michigan has artificially made it economical for Toronto to send their garbage to us. In FY 2008, Michigan residents sent 39,913,636 cubic yards of waste to Michigan landfills. Canada gave us another 10,722,164 cubic yards, and 6,484,096 came from other states for a grand total of 57,119,896 tons buried in the state of Michigan in just one year.

There are costs that Toronto and other states are not paying that will someday be paid for by Michigan residents.

Tons recycled

Recycling

Recycling is one way to reduce the landfill numbers we’ve already looked at. In Ann Arbor, curbside recycling is provided by Recycle Ann Arbor through a contract with the city. Currently, residents use two stackable totes – a green one for containers and a gray one for paper material.

Ann Arbor’s indicator for total recycled material is green (good) with a level arrow (steady). So what kind of numbers does that indicator reflect?

After a steady rise through the 1990s, the total tons of recycled material in Ann Arbor has leveled off or dropped a bit through the 2000s.

We have dropped a bit in the total amount of material recycled since a high in 2001, but overall our recycling rate has been steady for the past nine years.

To get that arrow for the indicator pointing up is one of the reasons we are looking at single-stream recycling to start in mid-2010 as a way to make recycling easier – toss everything in one cart – to boost our recycling rate and overall amount of waste we are diverting from landfills.

The city currently collects 357 pounds of recycleables per household (HH) per year. Single-stream recycling is expected to raise that amount by 100 pounds to 457 lbs/HH/year. Based on other communities, the addition of the RecycleBank rewards program is estimated to increase recycling to 752 lbs/HH/year – more than doubling the recycleables collected in Ann Arbor. These estimates also account for the expected drop in our total tons recycled because of the loss of the local daily newspaper in 2009.

Tons composted

Composting

Keeping organics that could be composted out of landfills is another way to reduce our landfilled waste numbers.

Ann Arbor’s environmental indicator is green (good) with an upward arrow (improving). What are the numbers that support Ann Arbor’s composting indicator?

Ann Arbor's total tons composted had an upward trend through the 1990s, leveled off, then dropped.

Like recycling, the amount of composted material rose steadily through the 1990s. But composting rates then leveled out, with a big drop in 2007. The numbers for 2008 show us heading back in the right direction. The recent drop is because of a city council ban on grass clippings. They made manually-emptied cans very heavy – but grass clippings are now accepted in the new automated compost carts.

Composting rates are variable and depend on weather – if the year is wet or dry, along with other climatic factors such as ice storm damage, that influences the amount of vegetation collected.

Also, the loss of all the city’s ash trees over the past decade due to the Emerald Ash Borer took a toll by eliminating an estimated 11% of the city’s entire urban forest. Beginning in July 2008, residents began using carts or paper yard waste bags for their compostables. In the fall of 2009, pre-consumer uncooked vegetative food wastes began being accepted in the compost carts’ seasonal pickups.

Percent Diverted

Total Solid Waste: Landfilled, Recycled, Composted

Looking at the individual components of the waste stream – what gets landfilled, recycled, or composted – is definitely useful. But it’s also important to look at the big picture.

When you take a look at the overall picture of waste that is landfilled, recycled, or composted, you get a composite that looks like this.

Total annual solid waste (landfilled, recycled, composted material) has been creeping upward.

It appears that the total amount of waste is down from the high in 2001 but our total waste has been creeping up since 2004.

The measure we look at for an indicator is the percentage of the total waste that is diverted – that is, either recycled or composted. This percentage of diversion is also known as the “recovery rate.”

Ann Arbor’s indicator for total amount of waste diverted is green (good) with a level arrow (stable).

Waste diversion is still fairly high at 41% (citywide, including both commercial and residential) and well above national and state averages. However, it is still lower than our previous high of 46% and well under our intermediate solid waste plan goal of 60%. When we look at just the residential waste stream, we are diverting 54% of the waste stream from landfills.

In 2000, a survey of comparable university communities was developed to benchmark Ann Arbor with peer communities.

       Boulder  Champgn  Madison  Minnpls  OrgnCty  Portlnd  AnnArbor
Pop.   110,700   64,280  200,800  358,785  107,000  505,000  112,000
HH      37,500   24,500   59,200  114,000   48,200  132,000   46,000
SW/day    3.00     3.00     2.53     2.46     3.79     2.75     2.70

PctDiv   36.40    28.20    46.30    29.40    32.20    50.30    39.60
PctRcy   30.40     5.90    19.10    16.60    25.00    27.40    21.60
PctCmp    6.00    22.30    27.20    12.70     7.20    22.90    18.00

ReCurb     513      155      501      384      479      661      727
ReTot      983      203      567      471      345      889      511
Yard       193      771      809      360      401      742      521

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It’s About More than Garbage: Climate

Diversion of material from landfills helps with the management of our solid waste, but it also has a positive impact on reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Emissions of GHGs is an environmental indicator that’s classified by the city as a part of a different environmental goal: stable climate. We’ll take a look at that goal later in this series.

But it’s worth taking a brief look at the relationship between solid waste management and greenhouse gas emissions.

The following is taken directly from USEPA, Methodology For Estimating Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Benefits November 2007:

The disposal of solid waste produces greenhouse gas emissions in a number of ways. First, the anaerobic decomposition of waste buried in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Second, the incineration of waste also produces carbon dioxide as a by-product. [Note: Ann Arbor does not currently burn any of its waste.] Additionally, in transporting waste for disposal, greenhouse gases are emitted due to the combustion of fossil fuels. Finally, fossil fuels are also required for extracting and processing the raw materials necessary to replace those materials that are being disposed with new products.

The national MSW recycling rate in 2006 was 32.5% (or 82 million tons). Using a WAste Reduction Model (WARM), the EPA has estimated the impact of that 82 million tons of recycling on total GHG emissions: It’s the equivalent of 1,288 trillion BTU – enough to power 6.8 million American households.

In 2003, a team of master’s students from the University of Michigan developed a climate action plan for the city. Using the EPA WARM model, they estimated the emissions avoided in Ann Arbor for the 10-year period from 1991-2001. Note: We have not updated these numbers (yet) using the latest recycling and composting numbers. Here, MTCO2e is the metric ton carbon dioxide equivalent:

Year      Recycling     Composting   Total MTCO2e
1991      20,983.02        977.45      21,960.47
1992      22,075.72      1,356.75      23,432.47
1993      25,630.61      1,530.75      27,161.36
1994      28,098.70      1,737.45      29,836.15
1995      28,254.14      1,973.70      30,227.84
1996      35,740.40      2,184.40      37,924.80
1997      35,997.50      2,865.00      38,862.50
1998      33,570.73      2,302.80      35,873.53
1999      35,247.17      2,262.00      37,509.17
2000      37,713.29      2,397.40      40,110.69
2001      42,086.72      2,536.20      44,622.92

TOTAL    345,398.00     22,123.90     367,521.90

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Following the EPA’s conversion, the 20,000-45,000 range of MTCO2e would translate to a range of savings equal to the energy needed to power 750-1,500 households.

Paths to Contribution

One of the goals of this series is to present some information about who’s already working on improving the city’s indicator scores, and to suggest some specific ways that members of the community can contribute to achieving the city’s environmental goals.

All solid waste, recycling, and composting efforts by the city of Ann Arbor are summarized on the city’s website: “Solid Waste and Recycling”

What can you do on a personal level? First, if you have less stuff, there is less to manage.

Second, reuse the stuff you have. The Reuse Center on South Industrial Avenue is one of several local groups that take items that are still in good shape. You get the tax deduction for your donation, and someone else gets an item they need (or just want more than you do) at a pretty good price. It also doesn’t end up in a landfill.

Personally, I have a new mantle over our fireplace that came from the reuse center, a series of low voltage halogen lights along our entry way, and a Rube Goldberg canoe carrier made from two recycled golf bag carriers. Other local reuse locations are listed online on the city’s website: “Reuse Options”

Third, what you can’t reuse, recycle. That should get easier soon. In mid-2010 the city’s residential and commercial weekly recycling collection program will be expanding to a single-stream program. As part of the upgrade of the city’s materials recovery facility (MRF), Ann Arbor will add and recycle clean plastic bottles and household rigid containers marked #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, and #7. Bulky plastic HDPE #2 items such as buckets, crates, trays, outdoor furniture, and many toys will be accepted.

Three types of plastics that will not be included in the expanded program include items marked with a: #3 (PVC for polyvinyl chloride), polystyrene foam (aka Styrofoam™), and plastic bags or film of any sort.

The city will continue to accept and recycle: glass bottles and food containers; tin/steel cans; aluminum cans, foil, and trays; metal scrap (such as pots and pans up to 1 square foot and 20 pounds/piece); milk cartons and juice boxes; newspapers; magazines and catalogs; corrugated cardboard (including pizza boxes free of food); paper bags; junk mail; office paper; boxboard (e.g., flattened cereal boxes); telephone books; and gift wrapping paper. Clean freezer food boxes will also be recyclable.

What about that old appliance you’d like to get rid of? Effective July 1, 2008, until further notice, the following electronic items are accepted at the Drop Off Station at Platt and Ellsworth at no additional charge beyond the per-vehicle charge of $3/visit: VCRs, stereos, microwave ovens, desktop computers, laptop computers, printers, fax machines, and copiers.

Other interesting efforts:

• Video on Recycling in Ann Arbor
• Ann Arbor Street Art Fair – Zero Waste Events
• Recycling at the University of Michigan

The purpose of sharing this indicator through The Chronicle is to share the State of Our Environment Report with the community and hear what you think. As the city’s environmental coordinator, I will be following any comments readers leave here.

Readers who’d prefer to send an email can use MNaud [at] a2gov.org. An easy chance for an in-person chat would be when the city’s environmental commission meets – the fourth Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. This month’s meeting is today, Jan. 28. Although meetings are typically held in the city council chambers at city hall, the January meeting will be a working session in the 6th floor workroom. City hall is located at 100 N. Fifth Ave.

Styrofoam baler with gates open, and the masher in the "down position." In this position, the operator can slide wires through slots in the top and the bottom to wrap the bale securely, before releasing the pressure on the masher. (Photos by the writer.)

About once a month, I load up my bicycle cargo trailer with an assortment of gallon jugs – plastic and glass – plus a mountain of rigid Styrofoam, then pedal off to Recycle Ann Arbor’s drop off station at the corner of Platt and Ellsworth.

When I drop my load of recyclables there, I’m not wearing my Ann Arbor Chronicle editor’s hat. Rather, I’m working as the sole-proprietor of a (very) small bicycle-based business called HD Hauling and Delivery.

I bring this up mostly to establish some sort of credibility as a friend of the environment.

That way when I reveal what I’ve been thinking about recently, there might be a brief hesitation before readers reach into their recycling totes, retrieve a well-rinsed artisanally-crafted mayonnaise jar, and chuck it at my noggin. Not that it will do those readers any good – I generally wear my bicycle helmet, even when I’m just typing.

Now, when I say I’ve been “thinking about” the idea of turning Huron Hills Golf Course into a landfill, I’m not saying that I advocate creating a landfill there. I’m not even saying that it’s a good idea to research the question. I’m just saying that the idea crossed my mind, okay? Why?

It’s because of a recent decision by Recycle Ann Arbor to charge a $3 entry fee for their drop off station, starting Jan. 2, 2010. How do you whack a rhetorical ball all the way from that $3 fee to a landfill at Huron Hills Golf Course? Believe me, you need a lot of club. Fore!

Why a Fee and Who Pays?

The sign posted at the drop off facility gatehouse indicates that the $3 charge is “per vehicle.” In any other context, I’d want to contend that my bicycle plus cargo trailer is a vehicle – as such, it’s entitled to its place on roadways, alongside automobiles. Here, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be lumped in with cars and trucks – if it would save me $3.

A recycling load hauled by HD Hauling and Delivery: Styrofoam, gallon jugs (glass and plastic).

So when I rolled up to the gatehouse on Tuesday this week, I asked one of the two people working the gatehouse what would happen after the first of the year: Would I be charged the entry fee?

The guy asked for clarification: “You’re asking if I’m going to charge you for bringing that stuff here on your bicycle?” His answer was no. On account of the much smaller carbon footprint of a bicycle, he said.

Okay, but what if I get a different guy at the gatehouse?

That’s when the guy revealed who he was: Steve Sheldon, operations manager for Recycle Ann Arbor. He’d be setting that policy, he said, by defining what a vehicle is. The idea of not charging the entry fee for bicycles, Sheldon told me, was consistent with Boulder, Colorado’s CHaRM (Center for Hard-to-Recycle-Materials) policy, which he was looking to as a model.

Although the new $3 fee at Recycle Ann Arbor is identical to the CHaRM entry fee, the price point, Sheldon said, was determined by how much revenue would need to be generated to cover a $100,000 drop in municipal funding. Sheldon said that when Boulder implemented their fee, there was a reduction in visits to the center. And he figured that Ann Arbor would experience a somewhat greater drop given the worse economy in Michigan as compared to Colorado.

By my back-of-the-napkin arithmetic, to get to $100,000, the drop off station will need to average a little more than 130 entries each day it’s open – the winter schedule is Tuesday-Saturday. On Tuesday of this week, there was a line of cars filled with folks who apparently wanted to get their stuff dropped off before the fee was imposed.

Sheldon clarified that the entry fee is added on top of any item-specific fees that might apply. For example, a computer monitor costs $15 to drop off – with the entry fee, that will now cost $18.

There are some discounts available for frequent flyers, though. A 10-visit punch card will be available for $25 – that’s a $5 savings. And a yearly pass will cost $75. Holders of the yearly pass will also receive a 5% discount on trash disposal at the drop off station. Sheldon said he’s already had interest expressed by several people about the yearly pass.

People who come to the drop off station to purchase compost will not be charged the entry fee.

What Does a Fee Say?

The fact that it’s necessary for Recycle Ann Arbor to apply an entry fee for the drop off station says something about the economic viability of recycling per se. It says that the activity of recycling – for many materials – still requires a subsidy.

Besides the drop in municipal funding, the other reason cited by Recycle Ann Arbor’s CEO Melinda Uerling in the press release explaining the entry fee is “the dramatic decline in market value for recyclable materials.”

The "container" bin at Recycle Ann Arbor's drop off station.

In our chat by the gatehouse, Sheldon recalled the heady days when they commanded $600/ton for paper. That’s dropped to $60/ton. Sheldon allowed that plastic and glass actually cost money to have removed from the station. Some of my load is plastic and glass, but most of it is Styrofoam.

Just as an aside, the variable market for recyclable material is one reason for the wide range of years for estimated return on investment for the remodeling of the materials recovery center (MRF) – from 4.3  to 7.8 years, depending on the market. That project will be undertaken in connection with the city’s single-stream curbside recycling initiative, which is set to begin next summer. The city council approved purchase of the new carts at its Dec. 21, 2009 meeting.

Here it’s worth drawing the distinction between the drop off station, which is operated by Recycle Ann Arbor, versus the MRF, which is operated by Resource Recycling Systems FCR. Recycle Ann Arbor contracts with the city to collect curbside recycling, which it delivers to the MRF.

Back to my typical load. Styrofoam is not accepted in the current curbside program – and won’t be in the new single stream system, either – because it sticks to everything else via static charges.

So what about the rigid Styrofoam that I bring to the drop off station? There’s no fee for the Styrofoam – was I costing the drop off center money by dropping off the Styrofoam there? Nope. That’s a material they get paid for, Sheldon told me.

It Ain’t Peanuts

The rigid Styrofoam – along with glass and plastic gallon jugs – is part of a load I haul for Kaiser Optical, located out west of town on Jackson Road. I connected with them through Washenaw County’s Waste Knot program.

Their recycling materials stream also includes prodigious amounts of packing peanuts. The drop off station will accept packing peanuts – but it basically works as a clearinghouse. That is, they count on people who want the packing peanuts to come scarf them up.

Sign at Recycle Ann Arbor's drop off station gatehouse announcing the new $3 entry fee to start on Jan. 2, 2010.

Rather than use the drop off station as a middle man, I funnel the peanuts straight to people who can use them: Carol Kamm’s iSoldIt, which sells items through online auctions on consignment; The Mail Shoppe, which provides shipping and mailing services, on Division Street across from the Kempf House.

And that, it seems to me, is the direction that we need to head with more of the materials we use. It’s not a novel insight. It’s the second “R” from the now cliché “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

But that’s a mantra really designed for consumers – it tells us how to deal with the crap we wind up with. There’s nothing explicit in that formula that says to the producer of goods: Make stuff that puts zero material into that 3-R stream.

Yet there are some producers who do that anyway. One of them lives here in Ann Arbor – Jeremy Lopatin, who operates ArborTeas – he imports and packages organic tea, and sells it online. I know Jeremy through HD Hauling and Delivery. The tea purchased by his online customers makes its way to the post office and UPS drop off on my bicycle trailer.

Jeremy is already using a custom-designed, eco-friendly, cardboard container, but will soon introduce the gold standard in packaging – a “backyard compostable” material. It’s also perfectly air-tight, which means greater shelf stability.

You can bury the new packaging in your backyard, and know that it will actually degrade without posing hazards to animal and vegetable life.

Golf Courses as Landfills?

That $3 entry fee for the drop off station suggests to me that burying all our trash would be at least as economical and more energy-efficient than our current path of maintaining two separate waste-collection operations – one for the landfill and one for recycling.

So why do we not just bury all our trash? Why are we even bothering with this huge effort to recycle?

Part of it has to do with the fact that we don’t really trust that landfills are truly safe – despite the layers of clay and plastic liners that are required to meet modern standards. But part of it, I think, has to do with the idea that we hate being “wasteful.” We’ve convinced ourselves that burying trash in a big vault is wasteful. Maybe it’s even true that it is wasteful.

But the alternative – recycling materials – is currently not across-the-board any less wasteful. If it were across-the-board less wasteful, it wouldn’t require subsidy.

However, our recycling activity at least confronts us with the stuff that we’d like to get rid of, and that confrontation could cause someone to innovate a way to eliminate whole categories of items from that set. Ann Arbor’s upcoming move to single-stream recycling will shift that confrontation a bit from individual households to the people at the MRF who sift through the stuff (aided with automated equipment), but a confrontation will remain.

The part that can’t be recycled, though, gets buried – currently at Woodland Meadows in Wayne, Michigan. But here’s why it’s functionally (if not politically) plausible and useful to think of dumping it at Huron Hills Golf Course instead.

Huron Hills Golf Course requires a substantial general fund subsidy – whether it’s operated as a golf course or just maintained minimally to standard to ensure public safety. As the city faces tough budget decisions, one possibility is to think outside the recycled cardboard box. So there’s a functional plausibility to this kind of scenario.

But you don’t need to read tea leaves to know that Ann Arbor is not actually going to turn Huron Hills Golf Course into a landfill. The state of Michigan is unlikely to authorize construction of a municipal landfill, and there’d be no appetite to engage in that losing local political battle.

Now would be a good time to note that I have not spoken to any city councilmembers or city officials about the idea of turning Huron Hills Golf Course into a landfill. And I have not heard of any plan to do so. I also do not suspect, even a tiny bit, that there is a secret plan to do so.

The vision I’d like to conjure, though, for Ann Arborites who wheel their blue trash bins out for collection, is this: After the operator has used the automatic arm to empty the trash into the truck’s belly, he heads to the eighteenth hole of Huron Hills, where Stew Nelson is lining up a putt, and disgorges all that trash right there on the green.

It doesn’t matter how much you recycled, the rest of the trash is going to keep Stew from finishing his round.

If we don’t think of that trash landing on the 18th green of Huron Hill’s Golf Course, we’re going to keep thinking it’s heading off to someplace innocuous, and we’re going to forgive ourselves for that trash, because we did such a great job recycling all that other stuff. But that $3 entry fee is a reminder that recycling all that other stuff isn’t something to be all that proud about, either, because it’s not as economical as just burying it at a landfill.

So I see the Huron-Hills-as-landfill scenario, plus that $3 entry fee for the drop off station, as useful tools to focus on community measures of how well we’re doing in this whole trash plus recycling equation. Those measures can be found in the city of Ann Arbor environmental commission’s Responsible Resource Use environmental indicator, which is a part of the commission’s State of the Environment report.

One key indicator: total waste per capita – the sum of recycling plus trash per person. We’re at around 1,000 pounds per person per year, which stacks up pretty well against the national average of around 1,700 pounds.

Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, will be focusing in far more detail on those indicators in the next installment of a series of articles, written for The Chronicle, on environmental indicators. In that treatment, which will appear in the next week or so, Matt is guaranteed not to indulge in images of golf courses as landfills.

Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, does not golf.