This is a mock-up of how the city of Ann Arbor might provide a text box with councilmember amended text in real time, just underneath the online CTN video stream of council meetings. (Art by The Chronicle.)

If you’ve never watched an Ann Arbor city council meeting in person or on Community Television Network, you really should give it a try sometime. The next chance to watch your local elected officials in action is April 7, 2014 with a scheduled start of 7 p.m.

As an entertainment option, I’d allow that a city council meeting probably falls somewhat short of the Netflix series “House of Cards” or the ABC series “Scandal.” That’s actually OK with me – because journalists in those dramas have been shoved in front of trains and shot dead on the street.

But any long-running TV series is more entertaining to watch if you understand exactly what is going on. If you have elderly eyes, for example, you might not be able to see if that text message Frank Underwood received was from Zoe Barnes or Olivia Pope. It makes an episode hard to follow, if you don’t know who sent Underwood that text message.

One of the hardest parts of a city council meeting to follow – even if you are well-versed in the subject matter – is any deliberation featuring wordsmithing of amendments to text.

So in the interest of making Ann Arbor city council meetings more entertaining, I’d like to propose a simple step toward helping the viewing public understand exactly what’s going on: Let the public see amended text in real time.

How could councilmembers, in real time, make visible to the public proposed amendments to text already under consideration?

An easy technical solution already exists.

It’s free, and it requires no registration or creation of user accounts. And it’s not Google Drive.

How Does Text Currently Get Shared?

As city councilmembers debate a resolution or an ordinance, it sometimes happens that someone will propose an amendment. Sometimes that amendment is so substantial that it amounts to a substitute for an entire paragraph (or more) of text. Other times, it’s a matter of striking a word or a phrase.

The council has an established procedure during a meeting for sharing among members of the council proposed amendments to text: email. The council rule allowing this electronic communication reads as follows [emphasis added]:

Rule 8: Council Conduct of Discussion and Debate
…
Electronic communication during Council meetings shall pertain only to City matters. During Council meetings, members shall not send electronic communication to persons other than City Staff; provided however, that members may send draft motions, resolutions, and amendments to all members. Members shall not respond to member-distributed draft language via electronic communication. All draft language sent by electronic communication during Council meetings shall be read into the record prior to discussion by Council.

How is the viewing public supposed to follow along? The media might be able to help disseminate fresh text; however, councilmembers are prohibited by rule from emailing the media during the meeting.

Still, in the past Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) has simply flouted that rule, at the same time announcing that he was breaking the rule, in the interest of providing greater accessibility to the council’s work. From the Nov. 18, 2013 live updates filed by The Chronicle during council deliberations on a revision to the ordinance regulating the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s TIF capture:

…
10:47 p.m. Lumm is reciting the reason she’s supportive of the ordinance. It’ll mean a 55% growth in TIF for the DDA over the next three years. She thinks it would have been better to impose the cap sooner so that sharing with the other jurisdictions would have began sooner. [Lumm's voice is failing her – she sounds under the weather.]

10:48 p.m. Warpehoski says he’s violating council rules to share the amendments with the media.

10:49 p.m. Eaton says he would have preferred a lower cap and a shorter term limit, but applauds the effort of the committee. Taylor says he won’t support it. The DDA has proven itself as a reliable steward of taxpayer funding. He recites familiar arguments in support of the DDA.
…

More recently, that approach has been eschewed in favor of one that abides by the letter of the council rule: Councilmembers have on occasion emailed the city clerk  and requested that the clerk disseminate the new text to the media.

Whether it is a councilmember or the city clerk who sends an email to the media during a meeting, that’s a pretty clunky way to proceed. In actual practice that probably results in at least a 10-minute delay between the council’s access to the new text and the public’s access to it.

Besides the delay, I don’t think members of the public should be required to rely on the media as an intermediary in order to understand exactly what is going on during their local city council’s meeting.

How Could Text Be Shared in Real Time?

My guess is there are several technical approaches that would allow any councilmember to dump some text into a box on their computer screen so that it would immediately become visible to everyone else – on the city council or in the public.

The specific solution that I stumbled across is stunning in its elegance: WriteURL. It’s a solution brought to you by a couple of guys with a Swedish address with Swedish-looking names.

The whole approach would be based on the existence of two URLs. One URL would be known to those who have editing privileges (councilmembers) for a document. The other URL would be known to people who just want to watch text in the document change in real time.

Here are five easy steps that would establish a suitable sharing environment provided by WriteURL:

1. Do not create accounts or user names or establish passwords of any kind.
2. City clerk visits WriteURL website and clicks once to create a new document.
3. City clerk names the new document something like “Council Meeting Scratch.”
4. City clerk sends the writeable access URL for “Council Meeting Scratch” to all councilmembers.
5. City clerk includes readable-only access URL of “Council Meeting Scratch” as part of the meeting agenda information packet that is disseminated to the public.

As a demo, I created a document called “Council Meeting Scratch.” Here’s the URL for the read-only access version: “Council Meeting Scratch.”

That kind of read-only URL would not depend on The Ann Arbor Chronicle or any other media outlet. Of course, The Chronicle would likely want to embed a view of that read-only document in our live-updates that we typically file from council meetings, something like this:

And as the lead art for this article suggests, the city of Ann Arbor might provide that same kind of embedding on the city’s website, in conjunction with the online live video stream of council meetings.

In conclusion, yes, I know that Frank Underwood would never receive a text message from Olivia Pope, because she’s in “Scandal” and he’s in “House of Cards” – so that would not make any sense. Also important: Frank Underwood is a fictional character, as are Olivia Pope and Zoe Barnes. They are fake.

But the Ann Arbor city council is not fake. It is real. And real always has the potential to be more entertaining than fake – if you know exactly what’s going on. For that reason, I think the city council should give something like WriteURL a try.

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The meeting and the letter came after SPARK had declined several previous requests for its financial statements – from rank-and-file residents, journalists as well as elected officials. SPARK’s previous decision not to release past statements became moot when Ann Arbor resident Kai Petainen received the past records on request from the state of Michigan Attorney General’s office.

Ann Arbor SPARK contracts with the city’s local development finance authority – an entity that’s funded through tax increment financing (TIF) – to operate a business accelerator. SPARK also receives grants from several public bodies, including the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County. [.pdf of SPARK's 2006-10 audited statements]

Based on Krutko’s letter, it now appears that SPARK will itself be providing past as well as future financial statements on its own website.

Krutko’s letter was included in a message that Rabhi sent to an online group – called “aa better local politix” – with a positive update on what he described as his efforts to increase SPARK’s financial transparency. Rabhi described the Nov. 25 SPARK board meeting as tense, but was positive about the nature of the board’s conversation and the outcome. From Rabhi’s message:

By the end of the meeting, staff were empowered by the board to develop a comprehensive recommendation on how to move forward and to begin with initial implementation. In my perception, staff actually seemed energized by the way in which I framed up the issue and the ensuing discussion at the board table.

Krutko’s letter to Rabhi and Powers cites specific steps that SPARK will now be taking:

• We have posted our most recent financials on our website.
• We are developing a “Frequently Asked Questions About SPARK” summary to be posted on our website.
• We are preparing to post our 2013 Financial Statements upon completion by our Auditors in Spring 2014.
• We are requesting your help in being placed on an upcoming Board of Commissioners and City Council agenda at that time to answer any questions in these public forums about our financial statements.
• We will develop a Use of Funds Quarterly Report to elected officials, on activities supported by public funding provided to SPARK.
• As we have done in the past, we will continue to respond to specific questions from elected officials at any time.

[.pdf of Dec. 4, 2013 letter from Ann Arbor SPARK's Paul Krutko] [.pdf of Dec. 4, 2013 message from Yousef Rabhi]

Roughly 100 cards are in circulation. Individual cards can be tailored for daily or monthly limits or by type of merchant. For example, if an employee is issued a P-Card for some specific type of purchase related to their job, then other uses – for travel or food, or computer purchases – could be prohibited as part of the card’s configuration. [.pdf of city policy on P-Cards]

The P-Card data had previously been available online through the city’s DataCatalog in the form of very large spreadsheets. The move to the A2OpenBook platform adds categorization by expense type and allows users of the system to specify time periods for a P-Card use. For example, for the expense category of “conference training and travel,” since July 1, 2011, P-Card use totaled $51,296.80.

The P-Card data is not refreshed overnight as other A2OpenBook data is – there’s a roughly three-month timeframe between use of a card and its posting to A2OpenBook. During that period, the transactions are downloaded from the bank, reconciled, and receipts from all departments are turned in. (A point identified by the city’s auditor last year was a need to ensure that P-Card use was documented better. Added after initial publication: The verification on authorized use is a separate process from the reconciliation process, which entails that the charges be placed on the correct expense line.)

The eventual rollout of P-Cards on the A2OpenBook platform was previously reported in a Nov. 30, 2011 Chronicle column.

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

There’s a possibility that P-Card data might be added in a second phase of the project.

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]

A screenshot of Washtenaw County's OpenBook website, which launched this week. (Image links to ewashtenaw.org/openbook)

Mary Jo Callan, director of the Washtenaw County/city of Ann Arbor office of community development, gave the coordinated funding update and fielded several questions from commissioners. She’d given a similar presentation at last month’s meeting of the Urban County executive committee.

Andy Brush, the county’s webmaster, made a presentation on the OpenBook project, which launched to the public on Friday. Commissioner Conan Smith questioned the amount of staff time involved in the initiative, and asked that they monitor usage of the site, to determine whether it’s worth the resources they need to invest. His comments earned a sharp rebuke from commissioner Kristin Judge, who has spearheaded the project. Minimal staff time is involved, she said, and taxpayers have a right to this information, noting that the push to transparency was a directive from President Barack Obama. Both Judge and Smith are Democrats.

OpenBook Washtenaw

Andy Brush began his presentation about the OpenBook project by noting that the board had passed a resolution at their July 2010 meeting that authorized the initiative. [.pdf file of OpenBook resolution]

Brush recalled a board meeting a few years ago, when a citizen stood at the podium during public commentary, speaking to commissioners because he was angry about some information he’d read on the county’s website. “In the world of transparency,” Brush said, “that’s when you’re winning.” The point is to provide people with information so that there can be a discussion based on what the county is actually doing, he said, not based on what people think the county is doing.

The county has been providing information on its website for many years, Brush said, but the information has been in various places that wasn’t necessarily easy to find. The current initiative was prompted by commissioners Kristen Judge and Wes Prater, after they returned from a National Association of Counties (NACo) conference last year where they’d heard about similar initiatives in other states.

Andy Brush, Washtenaw County's webmaster, at the board of commissioners' Oct. 7 working session.

Brush showed examples of sites in Palm Bay, Florida; Jefferson County, Colo.; and Ann Arbor. The county is already participating in the city of Ann Arbor’s data catalog, he said – for example, by providing the county’s GIS data.

The county’s OpenBook site – which is accessible directly or via a link on the board’s homepage – includes budget documents, financial reports, check registers and commissioners’ flex account reports. More information will be rolled out in the coming months, including salaries, purchasing card and credit card reports. There’s also a link to ask questions of staff, and a link directing you to the county’s Freedom of Information Act page.

Brush said the county is hoping to provide context for the information, as well as the raw data. They didn’t want to just throw up 16,000 lines of data, he said, but are trying to give sufficient detail – about who’s spending the money, and for what purpose – so that it’s understandable.

Before going public, the site has been accessible to employees, and the OpenBook team has been working with department heads for several months, making sure they were addressing concerns about privacy. Brush pointed to a whereas clause in the board’s transparency resolution that outlines some of the considerations they made as they were compiling the data for public view:

WHEREAS, the presumption of openness does not preclude the legitimate protection of information whose release is exempted by the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, or in any other way protected by any applicable state or federal law, would threaten security, invade personal privacy, breach confidentiality, or in any way damage other genuinely compelling interests;

Brush thanked the members of the staff who had worked on this effort. He also thanked Prater and Judge, praising them for providing direction and helping deliver something valuable to the citizens of Washtenaw County.

Commissioner Questions, Comments

Conan Smith began by asking how many hours of staff time have gone into the project. Brush said he didn’t have that information offhand, but could report back. Smith then said it was important to track all the time spent responding to questions that result from the initiative, and to track the number of hits that the site gets. He requested a monthly report with that information.

Brush said the experience of other municipalities is that they prepared for a deluge of questions from the public that never came. He also pointed out that there were brief meetings associated with the project, but indicated that the time spent on it wasn’t onerous.

It’s important to recognize that data is not democracy, Smith said. Providing data doesn’t necessarily result in a better process. He is concerned about projects like this – adding that the county isn’t trying to hide anything or make information hard to access. But at a time like this, with budget concerns and pinched resources, layering on this kind of work requires that they be attentive to the impact of this decision. He said he hoped that the board pays close attention to how much time it was taking and how much value they were deriving from the project, as reflected in how much the information is used. If they’re spending $20,000 to $30,000 a year for information that’s used by 12 people, that’s nutty, he said. If hundreds of people are using it, then it’s probably a wise thing to do.

Kristin Judge responded by saying that she couldn’t disagree with Smith more. First, she said, they didn’t spend anywhere close to $20,000 to do this project. Secondly, it’s their responsibility to make spending information available – it’s the taxpayers’ money, she noted. If a constituent wants to talk for three hours about why someone at the county spent $9 on gas, she said, “I’ll take that call.”

Judge pointed out that especially during election season, the staff already spent hours responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. If that information had been online already, she said, they would have actually saved time. For example, what if information about commissioner expenses had been online? she asked. [The comment was an allusion to the previous evening's board meeting, when commissioner Mark Ouimet was accused by Democrat Tom Wieder during public commentary of claiming per diem payments to which he wasn’t entitled. Wieder based his comments on five years of material about Ouimet's spending that had been requested under the FOIA.]

The transparency initiative is a “phenomenal” program, Judge said. Even if only five residents use it, it’s still worth it. She reminded her colleagues that this was a directive from President Obama, and that the state legislature might be mandating similar action statewide, as other states are doing, so it’s important to be ahead of the curve. “I see no downside to it,” she said.

Barbara Bergman expressed concern that there was no narrative around the numbers provided on the website. She said she wasn’t arguing that taxpayers aren’t entitled to know how their money is spent. But the easiest way to get rid of people is to give them a pile of data, she said – that’s not necessarily helpful to them, she cautioned. Bergman agreed with Smith that the project should be evaluated, adding that she wants to make sure it’s easier for people to get information, not harder.

Wes Prater urged Smith and Bergman to visit the websites of other municipalities that had done similar projects – Washtenaw County didn’t reinvent the wheel, he said. They didn’t spend time creating something new, but rather used existing models that were working. He reiterated the fact that taxpayers deserved to know how their money is spent, and that people are interested in getting that information. Prater noted that the Washtenaw County Road Commission’s website gets a lot of hits – and doesn’t even have the kind of information that the county’s website will have available.

Smith told Judge that he knows this is a project she’s involved with personally, and he didn’t intend to denigrate it. By way of background, at one of the board’s initial discussions of this project at a Feb. 18, 2010 working session, Smith had expressed more enthusiasm. From Chronicle coverage of that meeting:

Conan Smith suggested prioritizing data by looking at what information people were already pulling from the county’s website. He said he was excited about the possibility of third-party apps – software applications developed by people outside of county government, but using county data.

At Thursday’s meeting, he said the effectiveness of any new project should be examined. He noted that if there were nine people involved in it, and each person attended a meeting, that alone involved nine man-hours. When you factor in other things, like fielding queries from the public, it could quickly add up to $20,000, he said. The question is whether they’ll fairly evaluate the project, he added. He hoped that the public would be engaged and use the site, but it would be foolhardy not to monitor usage.

Judge said that not all people involved in the project came to each meeting, and at any rate, those meetings would be ending now that the project was launched. She restated her belief that they’d be saving on staff time for responding to FOIA requests.

Judge also pointed out that spending habits would likely change, since people would be aware that their spending information would now be easily accessible. People will think before they spend, she said. Judge also pointed out that by asking Brush to provide monthly reports, Smith himself was creating more work. She concluded by inviting Smith to ask his constituents if they wanted to have the county’s check register online. She said she hasn’t talked with anyone who hasn’t wanted that information to be available.

Ken Schwartz acknowledged that there would be startup costs with any project, but said only time will tell if it’s worth the investment. He agreed with Judge that the project had a good goal, and acknowledged that it was a presidential directive. He said he just hoped the information was properly used by citizens – data without context can be misleading or mis-characterized, he said. A year from now, they’ll have a better idea about that.

Brush noted that he’d been the “cheapskate” on the project, opting to post information as .pdf or MS Excel files rather than using more sophisticated methods of displaying it, which would have taken more time to put together. He also noted that they used open source software, which is available at no cost to the county.

Smith said he wasn’t talking about just data and dollars, but about the whole process of trust and engagement with the public. The provision of information and accessibility – it’s not necessarily an essential component of public engagement, he said. He wants the board to be keenly aware that feeding people information isn’t sufficient for getting the community to the point of setting priorities. If they’re spending all their time responding to individuals who have complaints about items on a ledger, then, concluded Smith, “I think it’s a sign that we lost.”

Coordinated Funding Initiative

Mary Jo Callan, director of the Washtenaw County/city of Ann Arbor office of community development, gave a presentation to commissioners similar to one she made at the Sept. 28 meeting of the Urban County executive committee.

Mary Jo Callan, director of the Washtenaw County/city of Ann Arbor office of community development, speaking to county commissioners at their Oct. 7 working session.

The Urban County – a consortium of 11 local governments, including Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County – oversees the allocation of federal grants for low-income housing and neighborhood stabilization. It is one of three groups that is considering joining a coordinated funding approach for local nonprofits. The United Way of Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation also could be part of that effort.

Currently, the county and city of Ann Arbor coordinate their funding of nonprofits through the office of community development, which separately provides staff support for the Urban County nonprofit allocations.

The five entities – city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Urban County, United Way, and Ann Arbor Area Community Foundatin – provide about $5 million annually for local human services nonprofits. Of that, about $2.6 million comes from the local governments involved, with $2.3 million from United Way and $300,000 from the community foundation.

The public/private model would focus funding on six priorities that have been identified for the entire county: housing/homelessness, aging, school-aged youth, children from birth to six, health and food. Callan’s staff – with representatives from each of the five entities – would review applications from nonprofits and make funding recommendations. Each governing entity subsequently would review and approve recommendations tied to their funding sources.

There are already collaborative efforts underway, such as a common online grant application system. Over the past few months, representatives from these different entities have been talking about how to work even more closely, with an eye toward better organizing the community’s investments in nonprofits. They’ve met with nonprofit leaders to get feedback, as well as with key donors, business leaders and other stakeholders.

Funders have been asking nonprofits to work together and collaborate, Callan said, so modeling that kind of approach makes sense. That’s one of four principles that guide this approach: 1) focusing on the consumer of services, not on the organization that provides the services, 2) creating savings and improving the process for funders and service providers, 3) leveraging the assets and strengths of each funding organization, and 4) providing a model of cooperation and collaboration.

Each of the priority areas – housing/homelessness, aging, school-aged youth, children from birth to six, health and food – will have a planning/coordinating group that will help make recommendations about the kinds of services that the community needs. For example, the Blueprint for Aging consortium could identify needs of senior citizens in the community, while the Washtenaw Housing Alliance could do the same for the needs of the homeless or people needing low-income housing. These planning/coordinating groups wouldn’t be making actual funding decisions, Callan said, but would be providing input and guidance. [.pdf file of planning/coordinating groups]

United Way and the community foundation would fund these planning groups, Callan said, and coordinate capacity-building grants as well – funds for one-time projects that would support the infrastructure of nonprofits. Examples of capacity building include leadership training, accounting or technology systems, or help with strategic planning.

The overall approach will be outcomes-oriented, Callan said. She gave some examples of current measurements in some of these priority areas. One of those examples related to eviction prevention programs funded in FY2009-10 by the county and Ann Arbor – five nonprofit providers assisted 784 households in keeping permanent housing for six months after assistance was provided. For shelter and housing programs during that same period, 10 nonprofits assisted 314 people to maintain permanent housing for 12 months after they left the program.

The governing entities of all five groups are expected to vote on this initiative at meetings in late October and early November. The county board’s vote is likely to occur on Nov. 3, while Ann Arbor’s city council is expected to vote at its Nov. 4 meeting. If all groups approve, the effort would begin early next year, in preparation for a two-year funding cycle starting in July 2011.

Callan concluded her presentation with an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Coordinated Funding: Commissioner Questions, Comments

Leah Gunn, who chairs the Urban County executive committee, said she’s been part of a work group that’s been developing this approach over the past year. The boards of United Way and the community foundation had some concerns about working with government entities, she said, but they overcame their initial reluctance. She said the approach does take into account both small nonprofits as well as new ones, and it will result in better accountability as well as lower costs for both the funders and the nonprofits. She urged her colleagues to give it serious consideration.

In response to a question from Barbara Bergman, Callan said that there will certainly be people who are dissatisfied with this approach, because the reality is that not every nonprofit can be funded. There will always be nonprofits that don’t fit into this model or these priorities, she said. But their goal is to think about the services that are being provided and how those services benefit the people who need them. Callan said she’s an advocate for nonprofits that do good work, but they’re just a vehicle to serve the citizens.

Bergman suggested that county departments – like the public health department – be included among the planning/coordinating groups. She said she supported the effort, but thought there would be a bumpy road in implementing it.

Jeff Irwin noted that he’d previously held a job with a nonprofit and had experience dealing with the mountains of paperwork and reports needed to secure grant funding. It’s important to recognize that this coordinated approach will also save time and money for nonprofits, he said. Irwin then asked Callan to characterize the way that the office of community development had saved staff time and money since it started coordinating funding for the county, Ann Arbor and Urban County.

Callan said that previously, each entity had its own process, and each had a director and staff that would identify priorities, develop requests for proposals (RFPs), meet with nonprofits, recruit selection committees, and review applications. About 90% of the applicants were identical for all three funding entities, she said, so the same work was essentially being done three times. Now, that work is handled by her office for all three government entities.

Irwin also questioned Callan regarding administrative overhead, and whether that was a factor in deciding who gets funded. Callan said they currently don’t request information about the percentage a nonprofit spends on administrative costs, though they do look at how a nonprofit leverages its funding, as well as its management structure and financial controls. When Irwin suggested that they consider including administrative costs as a metric, Callan agreed that it was a relevant factor, but noted that this is a small community and she’s sure they aren’t funding any nonprofit that’s spending an excessive amount on overhead. County administrator Verna McDaniel, who serves on the funding review committee, said that’s an item they discuss when reviewing applications – the process addresses his concern, she said.

Mark Ouimet noted that it’s possible for other funding organizations to join this effort in the future, and he thinks they will. It’s just the start, he said, and he commended Callan and her staff for their work.

Kristin Judge also thanked Callan, then asked what would happen if one of the entities decided to pull out. Although the county provides about $1 million to human services nonprofits, it’s possible at some point that they might need to cut back, she said.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) is being developed that addresses this issue, Callan said. All of this is contingent on funding being available, and there’s an understanding that if the United Way raises less money, for example, then that’s what they’ll have to work with. In addition, if one of the entities decides to pull out for whatever reason, they’ll need to provide 180 days notice.

Wes Prater urged Callan to reconsider the 180 days, saying that there needed to be glue to hold the groups together. “I don’t think we should give up that easily.” The agreement should allow the groups to work together with whatever resources they have, he said.

Judge also said that she appreciated the concerns of smaller or new nonprofits, who worry that there won’t be room for them in this system. Callan said that having a coordinated approach means there’s actually a better chance for creative ideas to get funded, and that capacity building will be tied to the community’s priorities.

Looking at the planning/coordinating groups that will be giving advice about which nonprofits to fund, Judge noted that the Washtenaw Housing Alliance, which oversees the Blueprint to End Homelessness, hasn’t met in several months. These planning groups need to be active in order to be effective, she said. Callan replied that the WHA understands that they need to refocus on the blueprint’s goals. And if a planning group isn’t effective, she added, her staff will seek out a different group that is. She assured commissioners that they’d have a voice in determining that outcome.

Conan Smith asked about the metrics used to evaluate the planning/coordinating groups, and whether they are aligned with the metrics for evaluating the nonprofits that are funded. Callan said in some cases they’d be closely correlated. She said there were broad community outcomes – keeping people housed and out of homeless shelters, for example – coupled with more specific outcomes tied to individual programs.

Smith asked if the coordinated funding is tied to outcomes being pursued by other community groups – the sheriff’s department, for example. Some of that is happening, Callan said. She said there are many different groups, including the sheriff’s department, that are focused on issues in the 48197 and 48198 zip codes – lower-income areas in Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. She said she hopes they’ll be able to coordinate efforts more broadly in the future. Smith agreed, saying the more that they can coordinate, the better off the community will be in the long run.

Smith also discussed the importance of allocating funds for nonprofits to spend on evaluating themselves. Callan said they’d made strides toward that, both in helping nonprofits set realistic goals for themselves, as well as helping them develop tools and strategies to measure those goals. But she expressed concern about telling nonprofits that they wouldn’t be getting more funding, but they’d now be required to spend part of their funding on self-evaluation. She said there are other opportunities to achieve the same outcome.

Smith concluded his remarks by stating his support for the coordinated funding approach, telling Callan it was “awesome – rock on!”

Coordinated Funding: Public Commentary

Lily Au spoke about the coordinated funding initiative during the two available times for public commentary.

Lily Au brought some props to her public commentary at the board of commissioners' working session, including questions about the proposed coordinated funding approach, written on posterboard.

She said she spoke on behalf of the poor people in the county, and compared the coordinated funding effort to megastores like Walmart or to a large boat – she brought toy boats as props to illustrate her point, saying that large boats can’t go upstream to help people, like small boats can. She was concerned about administrative fees that she said would take money away from being used for those in need, and said that the effort opened the door to confusion and corruption. [She made a similar presentation, using the boat analogy, at Ann Arbor city council's Oct. 4 meeting.]

Au pointed out that she’s attended several meetings of the Urban County, and that no one ever votes against the staff recommendations. It would be good for more organizations to join the Urban County, she said. Au argued that sometimes small nonprofits are better than big ones, and she urged commissioners to consider these issues before voting to support the coordinated funding effort.

Commissioner Response to Public Commentary

Two commissioners responded to Au’s comments. Leah Gunn noted that she is chair of the Urban County, and said that the group administers federal funds and follows federal rules with great rigor.

Jeff Irwin thanked Au for raising some important questions, and said that they’d been considering the coordinated funding model for many years. All along, he said, they’ve been asking whether this approach will actually save money – before everyone jumps on board, he said, that’s a question that must be answered. He told Au that the point of this initiative was to reduce administrative costs, so that fewer people would need to move paperwork around. That means there’ll be more money for the nonprofits, he said.

Addressing Au’s question about whether this will be good for smaller nonprofits, Irwin said there are positives and negatives, but it’s worth exploring. He liked her large/small boat analogy, and said that a fleet of smaller boats would have as much or more administrative costs than a big boat. So perhaps a hybrid approach of working together would be best, with the flexibility to fund some smaller, scrappier nonprofits. He told Au that he appreciated her zeal.

Washtenaw County commissioners Jeff Irwin (District 11) and Leah Gunn (District 9) confer before the July 7 board meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

After more than an hour of discussion, a majority of commissioners approved a step toward bringing back the land bank, which they’d voted to dissolve in March. Several commissioners raised concerns over funding for the land bank and the expense of property maintenance and rehab, though most said they supported the entity in concept.

A land bank allows the government – through a separate land bank authority – to take temporary ownership of tax- or mortgage-foreclosed land while the county works to put it back into productive use. Commissioner Ronnie Peterson, whose district in Ypsilanti and parts of Ypsilanti Township has been hit hard by foreclosures, has been an advocate for the land bank for several months, and expressed his impatience and frustration during the meeting. A motion to rescind the dissolution of the land bank was not considered at the July 7 meeting, but might be brought forward next month.

The board also held a public hearing on expanding the road commission from three members to five – three residents spoke at the hearing, all opposing the expansion. An animated discussion with a somewhat unclear outcome followed the hearing – with Wes Prater moving to stop the process of expansion, and getting support from the majority of the board. Calling that move “symbolic,” Jeff Irwin said he plans to bring a resolution to the Aug. 4 board meeting that will officially propose the expansion.

Several other items related to financial matters. The board approved an initiative to put more government information online, especially regarding budget and finance. They discussed and authorized re-funding bonds requested by Dexter Township, and noted with some concern that Dexter Township isn’t alone in its struggle to meet bond payments. And county administrator Verna McDaniel signaled her intent to hire Kelly Belknap as the county’s new finance director, replacing Peter Ballios, a 38-year veteran of the county who retired at the end of 2009.

The board also approved a brownfield plan for a project in downtown Ypsilanti, and set public hearings for Aug. 4 regarding two additional brownfield plans – the Near North housing project and Zingerman’s Deli expansion, both in Ann Arbor. The board is also expected to vote on those plans at the Aug. 4 meeting.

Washtenaw Land Bank Inches Forward

Discussion of the land bank was an agenda item at the Ways & Means Committee meeting, which immediately precedes the regular board meeting. Before they began, commissioner Jeff Irwin asked whether the public hearings that were scheduled to be held during the board meeting could be moved ahead to Ways & Means, prior to the land bank discussion. That discussion was expected to be lengthy, and several people were in the audience waiting to speak at the public hearing on possible expansion of the Washtenaw County Road Commission.

Corporation counsel Curtis Hedger indicated that public hearings must be held at the regular board meeting. Conan Smith, who chairs Ways & Means, apologized to the public for the wait. [The discussion ultimately lasted more than an hour.]

Ronnie Peterson, who has been pushing to re-establish the land bank, began by saying he hadn’t known that the discussion would be on the agenda. Smith clarified that at the June 29 administrative briefing – which Peterson didn’t attend – the consensus among other commissioners was that it wasn’t the right time for a vote on the issue, but that a discussion was warranted.

Peterson also apologized to those who were in the audience waiting for the public hearings, but said he’d promised to bring a resolution to this meeting, and he kept his promises. He said he’d been asked to be a “good boy” and wait until the July meeting, and he’d done that. Though he’d had concerns about the land bank when it was initially proposed last year, those issues had been hashed out, he said. He’d since come to believe that it was an important tool for the county, and especially for the eastern side, which he represents.

He said that in politics, your word ought to mean something: “If you shake a hand, it closes the deal.” He said he’d been promised that there’d be a vote on the land bank at their July 7 meeting. He’d more recently been asked to delay the resolution he was bringing forward, but he wasn’t going to do that.

Peterson then asked the county treasurer, Catherine McClary, to come forward and speak about the scope of the land bank, its funding, and the general status of tax and mortgage forclosures in the county.

County Treasurer: Uses and Funding of a Land Bank

McClary began by thanking commissioners for the support they’ve provided over the years in dealing with tax and mortgage foreclosures. In 1999, knowing that changes in state law would force the county to foreclose on more properties, the board stepped in to fund a social worker for her office. Since then, over 16,000 properties have been forfeited to the treasurer’s office, and about 500 have actually been foreclosed. Those numbers have been skewed higher over the past couple of years. Previously, the county averaged only 11 tax foreclosures a year. This year, that number is nearly 400. “It’s simply a matter of the economy,” she said. In the past, people still had the resources to work out payment plans – that’s no longer the case.

She also thanked the board for funding her office’s mortgage foreclosure prevention program. Her office fielded over 1,500 calls last year, and the program was able to save about 50% of those home, she said. The nature of those homeowners is changing – previously, people got into trouble because of predatory lending, McClary said, and you could change the terms of the loan to address the problem. Now, they’re seeing more middle class homeowners who’ve lost their jobs and just can’t make payments. There are few alternatives, and because of that, she said she doesn’t think they’ll have as much success keeping people in their homes.

Regarding the land bank, McClary said she was not there to promote it – that was the board’s decision. Land banks typically deal with tax-foreclosed properties, though they can handle any type. A land bank would serve all areas of the county, not just specific neighborhoods. She contrasted this with federal funding available through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which can also be used to help deal with foreclosed properties but is limited to low-income census tracts.

How the county would use the land bank would depend on the policies and procedures they put in place, McClary said. Would it be for economic development? To help people move into homes? It can take a lot of different forms.

But no matter what they decide to do, the bottom line is that they need funding, McClary said. The first land bank in Michigan, in Genessee County, was generously supported by the Mott Foundation, she said – that’s not an option for Washtenaw. Sometimes there’s money available through the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) or the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA). Alternatively, some land banks seek traditional bank loans.

McClary was recommending that the land bank be funded by transferring a half percent of the interest that’s paid to the county on properties forfeited to the treasurer’s office.

She said there were two resolutions that the board was being asked to consider. One would rescind their March 2010 decision to dissolve the land bank. The other made modifications to the intergovernmental agreement that governs the land bank authority. [.pdf file of proposed IGA resolution] For that, McClary identified four main changes:

• Changing the composition of the land bank authority board. The resolution would remove a slot designated for the sheriff, and add two positions for commissioners, rather than one. There would be seven members: the county treasurer, two county commissioners, the mayor or councilmember from Ann Arbor, the mayor or councilmember from Ypsilanti, the supervisor from Ypsilanti Township, and a supervisor from one of the townships in the western part of the county.
• Eliminating the requirement that the county treasurer serve as chair of the land bank authority.
• Requiring that the authority can act only after a majority vote of the entire authority board, rather than a majority of the quorum present at a meeting. For a seven-member board, any action would require at least four votes.
• Strengthening the language of the agreement so that the board of commissioners could terminate the land bank by board resolution. Previously, that authority rested with the county treasurer. [Although the board had voted to dissolve the land bank, it was actually McClary who executed that request.]

Hedger clarified that the resolution to rescind the board’s vote on dissolving the land bank must take place at a regular board meeting. Changes to the intergovernmental agreement would go through both the Ways & Means Committee and a regular board meeting.

Land Bank: Commissioner Discussion

Mark Ouimet began the discussion by saying that he wondered if the county could create a pool of funding sources. They didn’t have access to a foundation like Mott, but they could look into other alternatives. He was also concerned about the issue of property maintenance. He said he’s seen lots of empty homes as he’s been out campaigning – Ouimet is running for the state representative seat in District 52 – and the second or third time he goes by those houses, it’s clear that their condition has deteriorated.

Kristin Judge said that McClary had been very patient with them. The reason the board had dissolved the land bank was purely political, she said. They hadn’t been able to reach consensus about who to appoint to the land bank authority board. She reminded her fellow commissioners that they’d all voted to establish it originally. [See Chronicle coverage: "Banking on a Land Bank"] Then “politics got in the way,” she said.

She clarified with McCleary that after the land bank authority is established, the board can then seek other sources of funding. She noted that Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber was an advocate of the land bank. But it’s not just the eastern part of the county that’s being hit, she noted – her district of Pittsfield Township was also feeling the effects of the economy. It is time to put emotions aside, she said, and do what’s right for the people of Washtenaw County.

Board chair Rolland Sizemore Jr. spoke next, noting that he was the one that Peterson had alluded to – he had asked Peterson to hold off on proposing this resolution. A land bank is a good idea, Sizemore said, but they still need more information about how it would work, and especially on how it would be funded. It appears that both Ypsilanti and Superior townships would be willing to contribute funding, he said – he’d spoken to supervisors Karen Lovejoy Roe and Bill McFarlane about that. Maintenance is another concern, and it would cost money to mow the lawns and have the buildings boarded up. He vowed to continue working toward the goal of establishing a land bank, but he wasn’t prepared to support it that night.

Jessica Ping echoed Sizemore’s comments, saying she was concerned about funding sources and maintenance costs. With so many unanswered questions in this budget climate, she didn’t see how they could do it.

Barbara Bergman also said she couldn’t support it. She pointed out that the intergovernmental agreement established a source of funding – taking money away from the county that it used to service its debt.

Ken Schwartz asked McClary to clarify how the proposed funding would work. McClary explained that when a property enters forfeiture, the county collects a 4% administrative fee. There’s also 1% interest charged on each parcel when the property is turned over to the treasurer. That money goes into the county’s delinquent tax revolving fund. Money leftover from the revolving fund goes into the county’s capital improvements fund and is used to pay the debt service of other bonds committed by the board of commissioners. McClary is proposing that one half of that 1% be transferred from the revolving fund to the land bank.

Asked by Schwartz for a dollar amount, McClary said that in the highest year, a half percent would have brought in about $620,000. More realistically, she estimated it would be closer to $500,000 or lower annually.

Schwartz said it would help him to see a budget, laying out where the revenue would come from and what the operational expenses would be. Would they hire staff? How much would it cost to demolish a building or to rehab it?

McClary responded that the land bank did have a budget after it had been formed last year. They were looking to staff it with a part-time employee through the office of community development – a joint county/city of Ann Arbor department – as well as contracting for staff time from the county’s office of energy and economic development, which handles brownfield issues. The primary expenses would be for personnel, legal services and maintenance, she said.

In ballpark figures, McClary estimated that it costs about $10,000 to demolish a building, and $70,000 to rehab it. In one complex, there are 63 foreclosed townhouses – maintenance costs for that complex have exceeded $10,000 since April 1, she said.

Schwartz said a land bank would be really important to some communities, and that the county as a whole benefits whenever one of its communities is improved. But they need to see a budget and to determine how many properties they can reasonably help through a land bank. For him, the question is where the greatest benefit lies.

Leah Gunn weighed in next, saying she had provided commissioners with a list of all the projects that the Washtenaw Urban County has done, many of which are similar to what a land bank would do. She said the estimates that McClary provided are too low and don’t reflect the true cost of buying, rehabbing and finding a qualified buyer for these properties. Rather than creating a new bureaucracy, she said, communities that want to fund this type of project should work through the Urban County. [Gunn is chair of the Urban County executive committee.]

Gunn said she found some things peculiar. For example, the cover memo about the land bank states that there would be no impact on human resources, yet now they’re hearing that there’d be a part-time employee. At first they were told there’d be no impact on the budget, but there clearly would be, she said. The county doesn’t have $600,000 to put into a land bank, Gunn said. What would they cut instead? Would they defer maintenance on their own buildings? Default on bonds? They face a potential $1 million deficit next year, she said, so they need to look very closely at their funding decisions.

She also said she didn’t want to end up like Flint. The Genesee County land bank owns more than 1,000 abandoned properties which they don’t have the funding to maintain. “It’s a disaster,” Gunn said. “I don’t want that for my county.”

Wes Prater noted that they were only considering this resolution on the intergovernmental agreement at Ways & Means – they’d have to bring it back for final approval at a future board meeting. By then, he said they can clean up whatever issues remain, but they need to get it moving. He didn’t disagree with Gunn, but said a land bank offers different opportunities – there are things that it can do that the Urban County can’t. To him, it’s not so much about rehabbing properties as it is about stabilizing neighborhoods and getting rid of blight.

Since funding was a problem, Prater suggested removing mention of funding from the resolution.

Jeff Irwin spoke next, saying it was fair to characterize the original decision to form a land bank as a “bit of a rush job.” At the time, he said, he and others had concerns about the proposal. What was the strategy? What kinds of properties would they target – commercial, industrial or residential? So they went ahead and approved the land bank, and asked the people who were working on it to develop a plan. For whatever reason, he said, that strategy was never forthcoming. They didn’t get answers to fundamental questions, like how much it would cost, and who’d do the maintenance.

Irwin said that a land bank is a reasonable tool, and he commended Peterson for directing the board to look at the needs that a land bank is intended to address. But there are still unanswered questions, and now there’s the additional question of the funding stream that’s been added to the intergovernmental agreement. He asked for an analysis of the impact on transferring $600,000 to the land bank – what would that mean for the capital improvements fund, and the county’s debt repayment schedule? County administrator Verna McDaniel said she’d asked the finance department to provide that analysis.

Irwin turned back to the question of a strategy, and asked McClary whether there’d been any progress toward developing one.

McClary pointed out that the board had received a four-page memo last year broadly outlining land bank policies and procedures. Beyond that, they were hampered because the board never appointed its representative to the land bank authority board, she said. Irwin’s questions and concerns are valid, she said, as are Gunn’s. Before the land bank took action, the land bank authority board would need to develop the strategy – it’s not her role as treasurer to do that, she said.

Irwin then commented on Judge’s earlier request to put emotions aside – he said he didn’t know what that referred to. He said he respected Peterson’s efforts to push hard for the land bank, but there are serious issues to consider. Irwin said he wants to be proud of approving a land bank, one that actually has a chance of success.

Conan Smith thanked Peterson and McClary for their work. He noted that the funding source was only a recommendation. Last year they had started out with governance and political barriers, Smith said, which impeded the development of a strategic plan. If they rescind their resolution dissolving the land bank, they can then empower the land bank authority to move ahead with developing a strategy.

It’s not necessary that the land bank be funded, he noted. There are other benefits that a land bank brings – the property it holds, for example, gains brownfield status, making it eligible for state tax credits. His own preference is to move forward with governance issues, and determine a funding source later. The funding source that they’d been discussing was “highly volatile,” he said, and the fact that it’s dedicated to the capital improvements fund was “arbitrary.” He also reminded his colleagues that they’d “raided” the capital improvements fund twice during the last budget cycle, using those funds to help deal with the projected $30 million, two-year general fund deficit.

He summed up by saying there may be a community need that should be prioritized over the county’s institutional need – that’s the question they need to weigh.

Ronnie Peterson (District 6), left, talks with fellow commissioner Conan Smith (District 10) before the start of the July 7 Washtenaw County board of commissioners meeting. Peterson brought forward a resolution to bring back the county land bank, which the board had dissolved earlier this year.

Peterson responded to some of the criticisms of his fellow commissioners, saying that the board itself is to blame for not setting a budget or strategy for the land bank. He said he’d be willing to compromise and remove references to the funding source from the resolution. He reminded the board that they had asked McClary to recommend a funding source, and she had – it was a source that wasn’t a bond or a tax, but it’s not set in stone.

The board can make modifications as they move forward, but the process has to start at some point, he said – and it needs to start now.

Sizemore reiterated that he would support working on a land bank, no matter what happened with the vote.

Gunn again stated her concern that the funding source identified in the resolution would impact the county’s general fund. It violates the county’s first guiding principle, she said: Ensure long-term fiscal stability for the county.

Schwartz moved to strike the fifth resolved clause:

… that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners hereby establishes dedicated funding for the Land Bank by authorizing the transfer of the additional one half of one percent interest applied to properties that forfeit to the County Treasurer to the Land Bank Authority, such transfers to begin for those properties that were due to foreclose in 2010 (2007 and prior years taxes) …

Other references to the funding source were later also included in the motion to strike language from the resolution.

Judge pointed out that 76% of the county’s revenues are tied to property values, and that helping to preserve property values in struggling neighborhoods is fiscally responsible government. She said they set up the land bank to fail – they should take responsibility for that. They’ve had months to address these questions and concerns, she said, noting that Peterson had first raised this issue in May. [See Chronicle coverage: "Commissioner Vows to Re-establish Land Bank"]

They can set up the land bank without dedicated funding, she said, and appoint members to the land bank authority board. There are smart people who have already committed a lot of time on this project, she said, mentioning Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber and Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere. Give them a chance, she said: “We stopped it before it could be successful.” Referencing Gunn’s remarks about the situation in Flint/Genesee County, Judge said she assumed the land bank authority board here wouldn’t allow Washtenaw County to become slum lords.

Ouimet came back to the point he’d made earlier about seeking alternative fund sources and creating a pool of funds for the land bank. He said it didn’t seem like that suggestion had resonated with anyone. He suggested pulling in the United Way, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, local banks and other groups to work together on building funds for the land bank. He also restated his concerns about maintenance costs and property management, saying he didn’t want to add another burden to the county’s employees.

McClary said she’d heard his concerns, and made a commitment to seek other funding sources.

Bergman and Gunn both restated their objections. Bergman called it a “shell organization,” and said it was dangerous to authorize a land bank without knowing how it would be funded. She responded to Judge’s criticisms by saying that “political is what we do here – this is a political body.” As politicians, they were there to represent the best interests of their constituents. Gunn repeated her concerns as they related to fiscal stability and capacity to manage the properties – properties that just sit there won’t help stabilize neighborhoods, she said.

Schwartz said he agreed with Ouimet about the need for additional funding sources, but before pursuing them, there needs to be a baseline government funding level first. He said that now the burden of addressing all these issues is on those commissioners who support reestablishing the land bank, and noted that the resolution they’d be voting on that night was just a step toward that.

Outcome: The board, at its Ways & Means Committee meeting, voted to approve the revised intergovernmental agreement, with dissent from Barbara Bergman and Leah Gunn. The expectation is that commissioners will vote on both that agreement and a resolution to rescind its dissolution of the land bank at an upcoming board meeting, possibly on Aug. 4.

Land Bank: Public Commentary

Karen Lovejoy Roe, supervisor for Ypsilanti Township and a former county commissioner, spoke during the final opportunity for public commentary at the Ways & Means Committee meeting. She thanked the board for their vote, and said the land bank was important to her community. She said she thought that the township could come to the table with funding.

Lovejoy Roe said the thing that hadn’t been discussed was the role of landlords. There are streets in the township with 20-30 homes, and now a third of them are rentals – landlords are able to buy up foreclosed properties quickly. She said that with a land bank, she was confident they could turn those back to home buyers. Some landlords have no interest in improving properties they buy – there are two landlords in particular that the township is going after in circuit court, because of the condition of their properties, she said.

The Urban County, she noted, was very bureaucratic, and takes a long time to move projects forward. [Lovejoy Roe serves on the Urban County's executive committee.]

Lovejoy Roe then criticized commissioner Barbara Bergman, saying that Bergman had told Lovejoy Roe that she wasn’t going to do anything to help Ypsilanti Township. Lovejoy Roe said she was very disappointed that Bergman was holding the police services lawsuit over their heads – Bergman, she said, had told Lovejoy Roe to bring a $500,000 check to the meeting. [Ypsilanti Township is one of three townships that sued the county over the amount that townships are charged for sheriff deputy patrols. The townships have lost all appeals on the case, and Salem Township has reached a settlement. For the most recent Chronicle coverage: "County Settles Lawsuit with Salem Township"]

Gunn responded to Lovejoy Roe’s comments, saying she was very disappointed in the ad hominem attacks on Bergman. “There is no place for that in this body,” she said. Gunn also said that the purpose of a land bank is not to be a landlord.

Road Commission Expansion Lacks Support

The county board of commissioners appoints the three members of the Washtenaw County Road Commission board. Over the years there have been concerns voiced about the road commission, ranging from a lack of responsiveness to a lack of representation for the western side of the county. At their May 19, 2010 meeting, the county board voted to set a hearing for July 7 that would be the first of many mandated steps in order to expand the number of road commissioners. On the May vote to set a hearing, four commissioners – Kristin Judge, Jessica Ping, Wes Prater and Rolland Sizemore Jr. – dissented, arguing against the need for expansion. [See Chronicle coverage: "Hearing Set on Road Commission Expansion"]

Road Commission: Public Commentary and Public Hearing

Ron Motsinger of Dexter spoke twice – during time allotted for general public commentary, and again at the public hearing. He said he’d been trying to find out why there was a need to expand from three to five road commissioners. If the idea is to get better representation, he said he’s had several experiences with the road commission and has found them to be responsive. He gave an anecdote of a family member in Milan who’d had flooding issues, and said they’d been helped by the commission. He said he always has his calls returned, even on evenings and weekends. Motsinger also wondered whether going from three to five commissioners would increase costs, which he didn’t think was a good idea. If the current compensation is spread among five members, he didn’t think that would be fair to the current road commissioners. He said if the commission isn’t broke, he doesn’t see the need to change things.

Ken Siler of Freedom Township identified himself as president of the Washtenaw County Farm Bureau, which he said had voted against expansion of the road commission when the issue had been raised several years ago. They’d primarily been concerned about the costs, he said. Speaking on a personal level, he said a one-man committee was the most efficient, and a three-person committee was close to that. Most organization he dealt with didn’t have more than that, he said, and he didn’t think they needed more on the road commission. Siler spoke during both the general public commentary and at the public hearing, making the same points.

Bill Stein spoke during the public hearing, saying he was a citizen now, although he’d previously addressed the board as a representative of the road commission’s retiree association. Adding more commissioners to the board won’t fill more potholes or build more roads, he said. He praised the county commissioners who’d recently served as liaisons to the road commission – Wes Prater, Mark Ouimet, Leah Gunn and Ken Schwartz – saying they’d asked the right questions. He also praised one of the current road commissioners in particular, Doug Fuller, saying that Fuller frequently attended government meetings in Saline and Manchester. If anything, Stein said, perhaps the county board should consider shortening the terms of road commissioners, from six to three years.

Commissioner Response to Public Commentary

Several commissioners responded to Motsinger and Siler after the general public commentary.

Jeff Irwin said that over the past several years, many complaints have come to the board about the road commission. Some have been addressed, and some haven’t, he said. Another issue is getting a diversity of opinions and experiences on the road commission, he said. With only three road commissioners, it’s difficult to represent all geographic areas of the county, he said – urban, suburban and rural. Western Washtenaw also has lacked representation, he said. [Of the three current road commissioners, Doug Fuller is from Scio Township, and the other two – David Rutledge and Fred Veigel – are from the Ypsilanti area, on the county's east side.]

Irwin said he felt they could expand the road commission without increasing costs.

Kristin Judge said that before she was elected as county commissioner, she had supported expanding the road commission, because she felt it lacked a diversity of thought and wasn’t responsive to community concerns. Since then – and since Wes Prater had become a liaison to the road commission – things have improved, she said, and responsiveness is no longer a concern. When she talks with constituents, the overwhelming response is to not spend more on paying commissioners, when that  money could go toward filling potholes or building roads – even if it’s only $10,000 or $15,000, she said.

Judge later suggested that electing road commissioners, rather than having them appointed by the county board, would be another option they should explore. That would help address any remaining accountability issues, she said.

Jessica Ping said she’d also previously been a supporter of expanding the road commission. One issue was that it’s difficult to meet the requirements of the Open Meetings Act when there are only three commissioners – any time that two commissioners get together, that’s a quorum. She was interested in taking politics out of the equation, and had suggested appointing road commissioners based on five geographic districts – just as the the county commissioners represent different areas of the county. But she was concerned about the cost of adding more road commissioners, and didn’t know if the current salaries could be split five ways. The county’s corporation counsel, Curtis Hedger, was looking into both of those issues, she said.

Leah Gunn noted that she’d spent a year being an alternate liaison to the road commission. At that time, Wes Prater had been one of the road commissioners, and he’d made a big difference in the organization, she said. He had helped transfer the road commission’s human resources department to the county’s HR department, and had instituted a program of preventative maintenance. The road commission, Gunn said, had received the message about customer service, and was doing better.

Mark Ouimet said he’d spoken with several township supervisors and other community leaders on the western side of Washtenaw County, which his district covers. There was a strong feeling among them that the road commission has improved and there’s no need for expansion. They’re doing a better job of communicating, he said, and of partnering with local communities. The road commission is on the right track, he concluded.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. said he wouldn’t be supporting expansion. He praised Prater as the liaison and Ouimet as the alternate liaison. Ken Schwartz then noted wryly that Ouimet does cast a long shadow, but that Schwartz had been appointed by Sizemore as alternate liaison, replacing Ouimet. Sizemore quipped that Schwartz should wear a T-shirt indicating he was the alternative liaison.

Road Commission: Resolution to End the Expansion Process

After the public hearing, Schwartz asked Curtis Hedger, the county’s corporation counsel, whether the board needed to act. They did not, Hedger said – there was no need for them to take any other steps, if they decided against expansion. No resolution had been proposed.

Prater then moved to terminate the process of expanding the road commission. As a point of order, Conan Smith noted that there was no process to terminate. Hedger said you could argue that by holding a public hearing, a process had been started.

[In previously lobbying to set a public hearing on the expansion, Smith had talked explicitly about a process. From The Chronicle's coverage of the board's May 19, 2010 meeting: "Smith countered that it’s best when public input is given up front, not at the end of a process when decisions have already been made. And there’s nothing stopping the board from holding an additional public hearing later as well, he said. But the process of expansion requires certain mandated steps, with mandated time periods between each step. If they wanted to do it this year, they needed to get started."]

Schwartz asked whether anything would happen automatically, if the board took no action. It would not, Hedger replied. State law requires that a public hearing be held before a vote on expansion can occur, and Schwartz asked whether this public hearing would “hold.” Hedger said he wasn’t sure, but that he didn’t think there was a time limit. In that case, Schwartz said he’d second Prater’s motion, so that the issue doesn’t linger.

Irwin stated that he intended to bring a resolution to the board proposing an expansion, regardless of whatever “symbolic” action was taken at the meeting. Everyone will have the opportunity to vote on it, he said. Smith said that Irwin’s action was the appropriate one.

Prater then moved to amend his motion, to state that the board would not expand the road commission. Smith pointed out that a motion to not take an action wasn’t a viable motion. Barbara Bergman then suggested a motion that they would retain the same number of road commissioners. Prater called a point of order, saying there was already a motion on the table.

Gunn said if Hedger ruled that there was a viable motion on the table – which he did – then she’d call the question, a parliamentary move that forces a vote.

Outcome: The board approved Prater’s motion to terminate the process of expanding the road commission, with dissent from Irwin and Smith.

Irwin then restated his intent to bring a resolution to the Aug. 4 meeting, so “we can have this fun all over again.”

Prater argued that the board had better things to do. It was Irwin’s right, he said, but he didn’t understand it.

Smith said that they didn’t have a very fulsome conversation about the issue. The road commission doesn’t have a strategy for addressing the fact that it is seriously underfunded, for example. To allow the board to maintain the status quo when there’s a crisis of enormous proportions is irresponsible, he said.

Prater said he respectfully disagreed. “There certainly is a strategy,” he said. The road commission is pursuing ISO 9000 certification, which aims at enhancing customer service. And a capital improvement plan has been laid out, he said – they just don’t have the funding to implement it.

At this point Ping made a motion to adjourn. When told that they hadn’t finished the agenda yet, she replied: “Can I make a motion to stop this conversation?”

It was a successful gambit.

Transparency Initiative Passes

Earlier in the meeting, Kristin Judge introduced a resolution creating “Open Book eWashtenaw.org,” which aims to provide online access to a greater range of county data, including more detailed budget and expenditure information.

Wes Prater (District 4) talks with Kristin Judge (District 7).

Judge thanked fellow commissioner Wes Prater and the county staff who have worked on this project over the past several months – she read out a list of their names. She said she expects the program to be well-received by the public, and told the board “I hope this will pass with flying colors.”

Prater said he believed it will serve the tax-paying public well, and that the county will likely see a decrease in the number of Freedom of Information Act requests that they receive, because the information will already by online.

Check registers will be first to go online, followed by credit card and P-card (purchasing card) information, as well as salaries.

Outcome: The resolution passed at both the Ways & Means Committee and the regular board meeting, without further discussion.

Bond Re-funding for Dexter Township

Dan Myers, the county’s director of public works, was on hand to answer questions about a bond re-funding that commissioners were being asked to approve on behalf of Dexter Township. The debt was originally incurred in 1994 to build the Multi-Lakes wastewater system, in partnership with Lyndon Township, and with Putnam Township in Livingston County. The system initially served portions of North Lake, Silver Lake, Half Moon Lake and Blind Lake. A later phase added service to Island Lake, Ellsworth Lake, and portions of Bruin Lake and Joslin Lake in Lyndon Township and Patterson Lake in Putnam and Unadilla townships, as well as the village of Gregory.

In 1999, Washtenaw County had issued refunding bonds of $6.53 million for Dexter Township’s portion of the debt. Of that, $3.05 million in debt remains. Restructuring it would entail reducing the township’s payments by extending the debt for another five years – the township expects to save $38,000 as a result.

Myers clarified that the township is concerned they won’t be able to make payments in a couple of years, at the current rate. They also want to take advantage of low interest rates, he said. The situation in Sylvan Township is more difficult, he said. [In March 2010, the board approved the sale of $10.4 million in refunding bonds to restructure debt from construction of that township’s water and wastewater systems.] Sylvan had expected to meet its bond payments from connection fees, but development has slowed and there are far fewer connections than anticipated. Rolland Sizermore Jr. said they’re in “bad trouble” in Sylvan.

Kristin Judge asked Myers whether there was any financial loss to the county because of the situations in Dexter and Sylvan townships. No, Myers said, the townships are responsible for payments of the bonds, though the bonds are backed by the county’s full faith and credit. What if the townships can’t meet the terms? Judge asked. If the county had to make payments, Myers replied, they would ensure that the townships did “whatever they needed to do” to repay the county. What happens if they default? Judge asked. Myers said the county wouldn’t let that happen.

Mark Ouimet – who represents District 1, which includes both Sylvan and Dexter townships – noted that if hookups don’t increase in Sylvan, the situation will be “much more challenging.” He said he felt better about Dexter Township. The re-bonding does at least give the townships some breathing room, he said.

As he’d discussed at the June 29 administrative briefing, Sizemore said he’d like to see a review of debt incurred by these and other townships, which have used the county’s full faith and credit.

Conan Smith noted that since the board had dissolved the planning commission, there was no review body to look at situations like this. He suggested that they might want to consider putting something else in place to serve that purpose. [The county's planning commission was dissolved in 2002. It was replaced by an advisory group – the Washtenaw County planning advisory board. That group was dissolved by the board of commissioners at their Feb. 3, 2010 meeting, as part of the restructuring of the planning and environment department, which is now the energy and economic development department.]

Head Start ESL Job Approved

Before the board was a resolution authorizing the hiring of a part-time worker for the county’s Head Start program, to work with families that don’t speak English as a native language. Enrollment of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) families – primarily Hispanic – has increased about 15% over the past three years, according to Head Start administrators.

The salary range for the position is in the $14,912 to $20,408 range. The request did not ask for funding from the county’s general fund.

At the board’s June 29 administrative briefing, when the staff and commissioners review the upcoming agenda, Conan Smith had questioned how Head Start could afford the position. He noted during last year’s budget process, the board was told that the Head Start budget couldn’t be cut because they didn’t have a dime to spare. “Now, they seem to have a lot of dimes,” he said.

At the July 7 meeting, Barbara Bergman asked where the money was coming from to pay for the position. County administrator Verna McDaniel told the board that the county had been overcharging Head Start for the retirement of debt related to construction of its facility. Those extra funds will cover the salary, which McDaniel characterized as low.

Kristin Judge praised Head Start, saying she supported the hire because it was important for the county to be a welcoming community, especially with what’s happening on the national scene – an apparent allusion to recent controversial legislation in Arizona directed at possible illegal immigrants.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved creating the part-time position, as part of its consent agenda.

Water Resources Commissioner Staff

The board was asked for approval to hire a senior environmental planner for the office of the water resources commissioner. Approval was required because the proposed salary – $77,400 – was above the midpoint level of $66,634 for a non-union position of that pay grade. A memo provided to commissioners noted that the proposed salary fell between the authorized range ($53,732 to $79,537) for that pay grade, and was $2,730 lower than the salary of the employee that this hire would replace.

Commissioner Rolland Sizemore Jr. asked the water resources commissioner, Janis Bobrin, whether the person she intended to hire – Meghan Bonfiglio – lived in Washtenaw County. Bobrin replied that she did not. Sizemore said he had a problem hiring someone who wasn’t a resident of the county, and that he’d be voting against the approval.

Outcome: The board approved the hire at the proposed salary level as part of its consent agenda, with dissent from Sizemore.

Mellencamp Brownfield Plan Approved

The board’s agenda included a public hearing and vote on approval of the Mellencamp Building brownfield plan. [.pdf file of Mellencamp brownfield plan] The developer is buying and rehabbing three vacant buildings in downtown Ypsilanti at 120, 122 and 124 W. Michigan Ave., between Huron and Washington, and converting them to residential and commercial space. The $2.2 million project is seeking brownfield status as a “functionally obsolete” property, which will make it eligible for Michigan Business Tax credits. The project is expected to bring 30 new residents and 25 new jobs to Ypsilanti.

No one spoke at the public hearing. Commissioner Kristin Judge clarified that the county wouldn’t be losing any tax revenue as a result of approving the brownfield plan.

Before the vote, commissioner Ronnie Peterson – who represents District 6, which includes the city of Ypsilanti – thanked his colleagues for their support of the project, calling it a good example of the government and a private entity working together. He described it as a major effort and an example of what’s needed to revitalize the downtown area.

Outcome: The plan passed unanimously at both the Ways & Means Committee and the regular board meeting, as part of the consent agenda.

Public Hearings Set for August Meeting

The board set three public hearings for its Aug. 4 meeting – two of them related to brownfield plans:

• A public hearing to get input on the brownfield plan proposed by Zingerman’s Deli, which is expanding its business and seeking to recoup some of its costs through tax increment financing, which brownfield status allows. [See Chronicle coverage: "Zingerman's Project Seeks Brownfield Status"]
• A public hearing for input on the Near North apartment project’s brownfield plan.

The board also set a public hearing for the use of $43,954 from the U.S. Justice Department’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grant. The county sheriff’s department has applied for the grant – the justice department requires a public hearing as part of the application process. Last year, the grant was used to provide community outreach services.

Report from the Administrator

County administrator Verna McDaniel told commissioners that she plans to bring a request to the Aug. 4 meeting for approval of hiring Kelly Belknap as the county’s new finance director. Belknap currently serves as finance manager for the county’s public health department. In her new role, she’ll oversee budget and finance operations, which had previously been in separate departments.

McDaniel thanked interim finance director Pete Collinson for “holding down the fort.” Former finance director Pete Ballios retired at the end of 2009 after 38 years with the county.

Thomas Partridge reviews his notes before speaking during public commentary at the July 7 meeting of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Public Commentary

In addition to the public commentary reported above, Thomas Partridge also spoke during the first opportunity for public commentary. He called for the board to develop an agenda that’s worthy of the 21st century and this prominent county. The county should work toward providing food, housing, healthcare, transportation, education and jobs for its residents, he said, especially its most vulnerable citizens.

He urged commissioners to eliminate funding for the county’s lobbyist, saying it was a job that should be performed by state legislators who represent Washtenaw County. [The county currently has a two-year, $108,288 contract with Government Consultation Services Inc. (GCSI), a lobbying firm run by former state representative Kirk Profit.]

Though Partridge typically takes advantage of multiple opportunities to speak during the board meetings, he left immediately after his first commentary to attend a candidate forum held later that evening at the studios of Community Television Network. Partridge is a candidate in the Democratic primary for state senate, District 18. The other two candidates are current state representatives: District 52 Rep. Pam Byrnes, and District 53 Rep. Rebekah Warren, who is married to county commissioner Conan Smith. The Chronicle covered a July 10 candidate forum for that race: “Michigan Dems Primary: Senate 18th District”

Present: Barbara Levin Bergman, Leah Gunn, Kristin Judge, Jeff Irwin, Mark Ouimet, Ronnie Peterson, Jessica Ping, Wes Prater, Ken Schwartz, Rolland Sizemore Jr., Conan Smith.

Next board meeting: The next regular meeting is Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010 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. (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.

The board dissolved the land bank – a tool used to help the county deal with foreclosed and blighted properties – at their March 2010 meeting, but commissioner Ronnie Peterson has pushed to bring it back. He initially proposed putting a resolution on the June meeting agenda, but later agreed to a request by board chair Rolland Sizemore Jr. to hold off until July. But at the June 29 briefing, Sizemore and Conan Smith, who chairs the board’s Ways & Means Committee, said they were not putting a resolution on the July 7 agenda either, though discussion on the topic is scheduled for the meeting. Peterson did not attend the briefing.

A range of other items are on the agenda, including a public hearing on possible expansion of the county road commission, and a resolution regarding a transparency initiative that’s been in the works for several months. Led by commissioner Kristin Judge, the effort aims to put more of the county’s public documents, especially financial information, online.

Commissioners expressed some concern over one agenda item: Restructuring the debt for a Dexter Township wastewater system, with the goal of lowering payments – payments the township might otherwise have trouble making. The item led some commissioners to ask for a report on debt held by local townships that’s backed by the county’s credit.

Land Bank: Unresolved Issues

The board of commissioners authorized the Washtenaw County Land Bank Authority a year ago, at their July 8, 2009 meeting. In general, land banks can be used to take temporary ownership of tax- or mortgage-foreclosed land while the county works to put the property back into productive use. “Productive use” might mean selling it to a nonprofit like Habitat for Humanity to rehab, or demolishing a blighted structure and turning the land into a community garden.

The idea is to provide some options to deal with blighted properties. In the case of a tax foreclosure, for example, the county treasurer must auction off the parcel to the highest bidder – often, that’s an out-of-state buyer who’s looking for cheap rental property, sight unseen. That scenario often results in a high likelihood that the cycle of foreclosure will repeat itself.

Before it was formed last year, several commissioners voiced concerns about establishing a land bank, citing issues of governance, control and liability for the county. Ronnie Peterson was among the more vocal in his doubts, saying the board wouldn’t have sufficient control over the land bank authority, other than appointing some representatives. He was also worried about maintenance of the properties acquired by the county, and who would manage and pay for that. Ultimately, though, the resolution to form a land bank passed unanimously.

The land bank authority was chaired by county treasurer Catherine McClary, who had championed the proposal. But commissioners never came to agreement about who to appoint to the authority’s board, and didn’t receive the amount of federal support they’d anticipated would help fund the effort.

Citing these concerns, commissioners voted to dissolve the land bank at their March 17, 2010 meeting. Peterson was the lone vote against that decision at the March board meeting. He asked instead that McClary and others involved in the effort be given more time to address these issues. However, Peterson was not able to persuade other commissioners to table the resolution that dissolved the entity.

Then, at the board’s May 19, 2010 meeting, Peterson told his colleagues that he wanted to reestablish the land bank, and intended to bring a resolution to that effect in June. “I’m going to get this passed,” Peterson said at the time. “I’m going to get this passed at all costs to me.” Peterson represents a district that covers Ypsilanti and parts of Ypsilanti Township, which have a high number of foreclosures.

But by June, board chair Rolland Sizemore Jr. had convinced Peterson to wait another month. From Chronicle coverage of the June 2, 2010 meeting:

Peterson told commissioners he’d subsequently had a breakfast meeting with the board chair, Rolland Sizemore Jr., who had asked him to wait until July 7 before proposing a land bank resolution.

Peterson said that he’d be respectful of that request, but that on July 7 “I’ll be aggressive.” Jessica Ping, who chairs the board’s working sessions, pointed out that the topic of a land bank was on the agenda for the July 8 working session. Peterson said he didn’t have a problem with that – they can discuss the resolution that they’ll pass on July 7. He said he had delayed it until July 7, but would not push it back until August. [In the summer, the board meets only once a month.]

Sizemore said the land bank is a good idea, but there are still some glitches to work out. He encouraged commissioners to attend a seminar on land banks being held next week in Lansing.

Ping proposed shifting the discussion from the July 8 working session to the July 7 meeting of the Ways & Means Committee, which is held immediately prior to the regular board meeting. That way, they could talk through the issues they needed to discuss, then vote on the resolution that same evening. Conan Smith, who chairs Ways & Means, agreed.

Administrative Briefing: Questions about Land Bank Remain

At the June 29 administrative briefing, when commissioners got an advance look at the July 7 agenda, Conan Smith explained why a land bank resolution wasn’t on it. He described the land bank as a surgical tool, not something to use broadly. Commissioners hadn’t yet agreed about exactly how the land bank would be used, and that has caused a lot of consternation among the group, he said. It’s worth talking about what unique functions of a land bank should be applied in Washtenaw County, he added, so that they can fine tune it before moving forward.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. told his colleagues that a lot of questions still needed to be answered. He knew that McClary had been working on it, he said – she also attended the briefing. Foremost among the unanswered questions, he said, were 1) Where will the funding for a land bank come from? and 2) What should it be used for? He wanted to see it be more of a countywide tool, not just something used for properties in Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, Ann Arbor and Superior Township – all areas where there are higher concentrations of foreclosures.

Wes Prater said they shouldn’t forget that the land bank can also be used to deal with abandoned property that’s bringing down the value of surrounding property. The big value, he said, is in keeping other properties from losing their taxable value.

Barbara Bergman said she’d like to see a grid that compares the uses of a land bank to those that are provided by the Washtenaw Urban County, a consortium of local governments that receive federal funding for low-income neighborhoods. Smith noted that the main interest for Peterson – who did not attend the briefing – is in keeping people in their homes. There are a lot of other programs that have the same goals, Smith said, including some operated by the treasurer’s office aimed at preventing mortgage foreclosure and tax foreclosure. The joint county/city of Ann Arbor Office of Community Development also has programs providing assistance to low-income homeowners, he said.

McClary told the board that she was not promoting the land bank – she was just hoping to provide answers to the questions that commissioners had. She said she had pushed for the land bank last year, after seeing the number of tax foreclosures in the county climb – from 11 two years ago, to 100 last year, to nearly 400 this year. That’s why she had originally approached the board about starting a land bank, because she thought they could make a go of it and deal with some of those properties. But at this point, she said, it didn’t matter whether they considered it at their July meeting, or pushed it back to the meeting in August.

She clarified that the land bank authority would be an independent entity from the county. That meant that the county wouldn’t be responsible for the authority’s debt or other obligations, she said. McClary explained that some communities funded their land banks from a portion of the interest payments on forfeited properties – the board of commissioners could choose to do that as well, she said.

[In response to a follow-up email from The Chronicle, McClary explained that the state's General Property Tax Act allows the county to collect 1% interest per month from delinquent taxpayers. That interest is credited to the county's delinquent tax revolving fund to pay delinquent tax notes. Taxpayers also pay a one-time administrative fee of 4%, which also goes to the delinquent tax revolving fund. After delinquent tax notes are matured and paid off, any leftover funds are transferred to the county’s Capital Improvements Fund (CIF) and used to pay the debt service of other bonds committed by the board of commissioners. McClary wrote that for a small sub-set of properties that enter forfeiture – the first step in foreclosure – an additional ½% interest is added to the parcel and goes to the delinquent tax revolving fund.]

Bergman pointed out that the land bank authority wouldn’t really be independent, if the county were providing a revenue source.

Sizemore wrapped up the land bank discussion by saying that he thought the land bank was a good idea, but they still needed to work through some of these issues. He said if someone wants to fight about it at the July 7 meeting, he wouldn’t be supporting it at this point.

Though there’s no resolution on the agenda, Peterson – or any commissioner – has the option of bringing a resolution from the floor during the meeting.

McClary thanked the commissioners, saying that this had been the most productive discussion they’d had on the land bank issue so far.

Transparency Initiative

At the June 29 briefing, commissioner Kristin Judge passed out a draft copy of a resolution she intends to bring forward at the July 7 Ways & Means Committee meeting – a committee of the whole board that meets immediately prior to the regular board meeting. The resolution would establish “Open Book eWashtenaw.org,” providing online access to county data, including more detailed budget and expenditure information.

Judge said a team of people – including commissioner Wes Prater, the county’s knowledge manager Andy Brush, and Pete Collinson, interim finance director – had been working with department heads and others on this project. Brush and Collinson attended the briefing.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. asked Judge why she feels they need to do this. Judge replied that it’s the right thing to do, giving the taxpayers access to information about how their money is being spent. It’s also a directive of the Obama administration, she noted. Though the county already does a good job at this, they can do more, she said.

Check registers will be first to go online. Next will be credit card and P-card (purchasing card) information, as well as salaries.

Barbara Bergman expressed some concern about privacy issues. Judge pointed to one of the Whereas clauses, which states:

” [...] the presumption of openness does not preclude the legitimate protection of information whose release is exempted by the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, or in any other way protected by any applicable federal law, would threaten security, invade personal privacy, breach confidentiality, or in any way damage other genuinely compelling interests.” [.pdf file of full resolution]

Conan Smith suggested that they monitor the amount of staff time it takes to put this information online, and how many hits it gets. Tracking the number of Freedom of Information Act requests before and after the data goes online is another way to monitor its effectiveness, he said.

Judge agreed that it was good to monitor those things, but reiterated that the public owns the information, and government should make it as accessible as possible.

The board will consider the resolution at the July 7 Ways & Means Committee meeting. If approved, it will come before the board for final approval at their Aug. 4 board meeting.

Other Items on the July 7 Agenda

The board will consider and vote on several other items at its July 7 meeting, including the following:

Public Hearings: Road Commission, Brownfield Plan

The board will hold two public hearings on July 7, seeking input on: 1) possible expansion of the Washteanw County Road Commission from three to five members; and 2) a brownfield plan for the Mellencamp Building in downtown Ypsilanti.

No additional action is expected regarding the road commission on July 7.

In addition to the public hearing, the board is scheduled to vote on approval of the Mellencamp Building brownfield plan. [.pdf file of Mellencamp brownfield plan] The developer is buying and rehabbing three vacant buildings at 120, 122 and 124 W. Michigan Ave., between Huron and Washington, and converting them to residential and commercial space. The $2.2 million project is seeking brownfield status as a “functionally obsolete” property, which will make it eligible for Michigan Business Tax credits. [For more details on how the brownfield process works, see Chronicle coverage: "Zingerman's Project Seeks Brownfield Status"]

Portage Lake Dam Repairs

The board is being asked by the office of the water resources commissioner to authorize maintenance and repair costs for Portage Lake Dam. The estimated cost is $184,690 over a three-year period, from 2010 through 2012. In addition to monitoring several potential problems – including a crack in the right downstream retaining wall and a downstream retaining wall on the left embankment that’s leaning towards the river – the project includes updating the electrical control system and adding “No trespassing” signs, among other changes. [.pdf file of suggested maintenance and repairs]

At the June 29 administrative briefing, the item prompted Rolland Sizemore Jr., the board’s chair, to ask county administrator Verna McDaniel for an update on the dams along the Huron River in Washtenaw County. He suggested a working session with the Huron River Watershed Council and the county’s water resources commissioner, Janis Bobrin.

The request prompted Conan Smith to quip: “Let the record show that Rolland wants another dam meeting.” The comment was met with a certain number of good-natured groans from his colleagues.

Bond Refunding for Dexter Township

The board will vote to authorize the sale of refunding bonds for Dexter Township – debt that was originally incurred in 1994 to build the Multi-Lakes wastewater system, in partnership with Lyndon Township, and with Putnam Township in Livingston County. The system initially served portions of North Lake, Silver Lake, Half Moon Lake and Blind Lake. A later phase added service to Island Lake, Ellsworth Lake, and portions of Bruin Lake and Joslin Lake in Lyndon Township and Patterson Lake in Putnam and Unadilla townships, as well as the village of Gregory.

In 1999, Washtenaw County had issued refunding bonds of $6.53 million for Dexter Township’s portion of the debt. Now, $3.05 million in debt remains – restructuring it would entail reducing the township’s payments by extending the debt for another five years, a move that’s expected to save the township $38,000.

Commissioners were told that without the restructuring, the township would potentially not have sufficient funds to make its debt payments.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. pointed out that the board took similar action for Sylvan Township earlier this year. In March 2010, the board approved the sale of $10.4 million in refunding bonds to restructure debt from construction of that township’s water and wastewater systems. From the cover memo of the Sylvan Township resolution:

On July 18, 2001, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners approved a Resolution (Resolution #01-0138) to sell $12.5 million in bonds to assist Sylvan Township in the construction of a water and wastewater system. Although the bonds were issued by the County, the Township contractually agreed to be responsible for making the required bond payments. In recent years, the economic difficulties that have beset Michigan have also affected the ability of the Township to generate cash flow for debt service through new connections to the system. However, those same economic conditions have reduced interest rates and provided an opportunity to restructure the original debt to provide cost savings for the Township and additional time for economic recovery.

Sizemore asked McDaniel that the board be given a review of debt incurred by these and other townships, which have used the county’s full faith and credit. Barbara Bergman agreed, wondering how many similar projects there are. It was scary, she said, to think what the county’s responsibility would be if a township defaulted.

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.

In that article, we indicated that the “the content seems to fall into two categories: (i) adolescent humor, and (ii) apparent ‘backchannel’ discussion of issues before the council, which raises more serious concerns.” The content of some of those emails has now been published in various forms in other media outlets.

We begin our own treatment of this episode in city politics by providing historical context for the Ann Arbor community’s concern about city council email exchanges during council meetings – one that predates the FOIA requests by GLELC.

In that context, we’d like to consider one of the email exchanges in more detail and use it to illuminate ethical issues surrounding the use of electronic communications during official meetings. And on that basis, we’ll explore some possibilities for the use of technology to push information to the public, instead of using it to screen decision-making processes from the public. In addition to the ethical and informational issues, there are legal questions that arise from these FOIA-ed materials. Those legal questions relate to possible  violation of the Michigan Open Meetings Act, as well as the city’s preparedness to meet the requirements of FOIA when electronic records are requested.

Historical Context

The recent publication by The Ann Arbor News of excerpts of the email exchanges between Ann Arbor city councilmembers during their meetings has provoked intense criticism of councilmembers by The News (in a June 7 editorial) and by the newspaper’s readers. The criticism has been appropriately harsh, and some councilmembers have now issued apologies.

In an online comment posted on MLive.com in response to a June 7 Ann Arbor News article, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) contended he was treated unfairly by The News – a single-word reply he had made was not presented in its accurate context by The News, and he’d been given no opportunity to clarify that context before publication. Apologies from Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) came on the radio Tuesday morning (June 9, 2009) with Lucy Ann Lance on WLBY 1290AM, and from Leigh Greden (Ward 3) and Margie Teall (Ward 4) via emails sent to some of their constituents.

Criticism of councilmembers for managing email correspondence – or working on their city-issued laptop computers – during their meetings is not new.

On March 29, 2009, LuAnne Bullington (former city council candidate in Ward 3) wrote in a letter to the editor published in The News:

While citizens speak, these council members type away on their computers, whisper to each other and giggle like schoolchildren. Some council members don’t even look at the people speaking to them.

And more than a year ago, on April 8, 2008, Ann K. Dilcher wrote in a letter to The News:

I always question the use of laptops by the council members. They often seem more tuned into their screens than the presentations from the floor. The members may be looking up important documents that relate to the discussion or may be e-mailing family – as an observer, you just don’t know. I think it would be good for them to consider going “topless.”

Councilmembers themselves have historically defended multi-tasking with their laptop computers during meetings as an efficient use of their time, and have not tried to hide the fact that emailing takes place during council meetings. They have also not tried to hide the fact that on occasion this emailing bears in a substantive way on deliberations. As we reported in our Jan. 5, 2009 report on a city council meeting, during deliberations on the postponement of the City Place PUD application, Leigh Greden (Ward 3) announced that the contents of an email he’d received factored into his rationale for a postponement.

Greden indicated that his reasons for postponing had gone from two to three in light of an email he’d just received.

That effort to postpone ultimately failed. In light of The Chronicle’s report of that meeting, some readers inquired with us about Greden’s use of email during the meeting. Here’s my reply to one of those inquiries in excerpted form:

There’s no doubt that the open meetings act and FOIA have not kept pace with current communications technology. I’d note that Greden simply referenced an email – who it was from (a council colleague, a random citizen, the developer, his mom … ) is anybody’s guess. Which, I take it, is part of your point: we shouldn’t have to guess.  … It’s a general issue that I’m attuned to, but would most likely require devotion of considerable resources in order to do it right. I think to take aim at this particular instance of a reference to an email by Greden would come off as a “pot shot.”

Prompted in part by Greden’s announcement about the email at the January meeting, The Chronicle has since then urged the Ann Arbor city council to move its workings more squarely out of the realm of email and into public view. That urging has taken the form of encouraging council members to use their Sunday night caucus in a way that is more constructive than its current use – which can fairly be described as yet another occasion on which to passively entertain input from the public.

And that urging has been coupled with an encouragement by citizens to play a constructive part in a productive Sunday night caucus: one that results in council sharing publicly the way it slogs through its workload. The public’s role in that, we’ve suggested, is to ask “journalist-citizen” questions. In published form, that suggestion was included in our most recent Monthly Milestone, but in draft form, it’s something I’ve conveyed  to several people privately. Here’s a different excerpt from the same reply above to the inquiry about Greden’s email:

Sure, council members sometimes interrupt and ask clarificational questions, but typically the communication is one-way: citizens speak their mind and all council members have to do is sit and listen politely. Imagine, though, a scenario where a citizen had on Sunday asked these questions of councilmembers:

1. What have your conversations (if any) with members of the planning commission focused on?
2. What have your conversations (if any) with the developer focused on?
3. Does the “by right” threat factor into your analysis how to vote? If so, how?
4. What standards should the council apply in not following a recommendation by the planning commission?

The only change I’ve noticed in Sunday night caucus since The Chronicle has made these efforts is that Mayor John Hieftje now introduces the event by stressing that it’s optional for councilmembers to attend and that many of them have family obligations that preclude their attendance.

Efforts by The Chronicle to be included on correspondence from councilmembers to city staff with their “caucus questions” has also met with minimal success. And efforts to be copied in on the staff response to their emailed questions has not yet met with success, despite good faith efforts made by the city attorney to put such a mechanism in place. We’re still optimistic that eventually some kind of mechanism can be established.

It’s in that context that The Chronicle has executed a FOIA request for additional electronic mail records from the city. Factoring in the extension which the city is allowed by law to take, the deadline for compliance with that request is June 15, 2009.

Deliberations on Postponement?

In their public apologies for their emails, some councilmembers have stressed that their future emails during council meetings will not involve the kind of irreverent non-city-related business that has provoked intense criticism from the community. In her emailed apology, for example, Teall wrote: “Any further non-business e-mailing during Council meetings has ceased, and will not continue.”

It is the business-related emailing, however, that warrants our attention, especially because the now-apologetic councilmembers seem to indicate that it will continue unabated.

To illustrate one kind of email exchange that GLELC’s FOIA brought to light, we examine one in which councilmembers – during the Feb. 17, 2009 council meeting – write about the possibility of a postponement of site plan approval and the authorization of bonds for the Fifth Avenue parking garage. For the sake of readability, we’ve excluded some back-and-forth about a “rate-setting meeting” that was included in the message bodies of some exchanges. [The exchanges are in the file "pack5.txt" at the conclusion of the article.]

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:19 PM
From: Hohnke, Carsten
To:  Smith, Sandi

I assume DDA would not be happy with a
postponement of the structure, yes?

----------

Date:  Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:35:05 -0500
From:  Smith, Sandi
To:    Hohnke

True. But postponing to a date certain
may be palatable...

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:40 PM
From: Hohnke, Carsten
To: Teall, Margie

Are you supportive of postponing the structure?

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:41 PM
From: Teall, Margie
To: Hohnke, Carsten

No. Why is anyone thinking about it?

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:43 PM
From: Hohnke, Carsten
To: Teall, Margie

Marcia!

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:44 PM
From: Teall, Margie
To: Hohnke, Carsten
Cc: Greden, Leigh

But why?

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:46 PM
From: Greden, Leigh
To: Teall, Margie; Hohnke, Carsten

She's against 5th/Division and wants time
to work on excluding that.

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:49 PM
From: Teall, Margie
To: Greden, Leigh; Hohnke, Carsten

Doesn't that put her squarely against Sandi?

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:49 PM
From: Greden, Leigh
To: Teall, Margie; Hohnke, Carsten

Yup. And against Hewitt and maybe Gunn.
I told her that. She doesn't care.

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:50 PM
From: Teall, Margie
To: Greden, Leigh; Hohnke, Carsten

She cares...

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:55 PM
From: Greden, Leigh
To: Teall, Margie; Hohnke, Carsten

She said she doesn't.

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:56 PM
From: Teall, Margie
To: Greden, Leigh; Hohnke, Carsten

She told me what you said, and she was not happy...
I think she does care.
Does Sandi know what's going on?

----------

Date:  Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:56:33 -0500
From:  Greden, Leigh
To: Teall, Margie; Hohnke, Carsten

I was only telling her the truth.

----------

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 8:27 PM
From: Higgins, Marcia
To: Briere, Sabra; Smith, Sandi
Subject: I won't be asking for a postponement

[message body was empty as it was conveyed
in the subject line]

----------

Sent: Tue 2/17/2009 8:27 PM
From: Smith, Sandi
To:  Higgins, Marcia
Subject: RE: I won't be asking for a postponement

;-)

-

Other FOIA-ed material by GLELC makes clear that the issue of postponement had been raised by resident Steven Bean with councilmembers up to the day of their meeting. [Bean is also chair of the city's environmental commission, but raised the issue as an ordinary citizen – the environmental commission's input was not sought on the underground parking garage.] Bean’s concern was different from the one attributed by Greden to Higgins in the above email exchange.

In an email addressed to all councilmembers on the day of the meeting, Bean wrote:

I believe that a delay is fully justified given the state of the economy, the upcoming addition of several hundred new parking spaces elsewhere downtown, the incomplete implementation of alternatives for managing peak parking demand, the lack of consideration of environmental impacts (such as greenhouse gas emissions) from increasing parking supply, and the likelihood of a permanent decrease in parking demand early in the lifetime of the proposed structure. (The last two might seem contradictory, but any increase in emissions, no matter how short-lived, would be very detrimental.)

Replying to Bean at one point during their back and forth, Greden wrote: “I enjoy these debates!” Bean responded:

Me too! Why didn’t we (all) have one on this before council decided that the best alternative was an underground structure at the library lot? Or before they asked the DDA to get a design for one? Or before the bond sale was approved? (Okay, we’re a few hours away still.) Or …? Well, at least you and I are having it.

Ethical Issues

John Chamberlin is founder of Center for Ethics in Public Life at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and spoke with The Chronicle by phone a few weeks ago – but not about the specific emails that have since been published. Reacting to our summary of some of the emails as “adolescent humor,” Chamberlin said at the time, “They ought to know better. There is no public purpose served.”

But emailed communication could serve a public purpose. As for the general question of emailed communication, Chamberlin suggested that one way to frame the issue was by asking if those communications were a substitute for some other mechanism that did serve a public purpose, and asking if that mechanism was something that needed to be brought into the open.

If the communication is a substitute for deliberations on a matter before the council, Chamberlin said, then that communication should obviously be opened up: “You’re acting in your official capacity as a public official. You have hidden part of your commentary.” It’s certainly okay for two members of council to talk, he noted, but the question of whether they should be able to talk privately during a meeting is a different question. You’re permitted to lean over and whisper in someone’s ear, he noted. Such a conversation could be a clarificational matter as simple as “What did he say?” and possibly be more efficient than calling for a recess from the meeting.

But Chamberlin allowed that one of the ways that leaning over and whispering in someone’s ear is different from email is this: It’s readily apparent that some sort of communication is taking place when such whispering occurs – emailed communications are not so readily apparent. Working at a laptop looks much the same to an observer, whether someone is emailing or looking up material on the internet.

In evaluating the ethics of the email exchanges above – about a possible postponement of the parking garage decision – it’s apparent that a postponement was an option that some members of council might have been willing to entertain, even if there were not enough votes to pass a postponement.

There had apparently been conversations before the meeting among various parties on the merits of a postponement. Yet there were no deliberations on the question of a postponement, because no motion to postpone was brought. The emailed exchanges, then, served as a substitute for a conversation at the table about whether a motion to postpone would be brought, as well as a substitute for a conversation at the table about the fact that there had been discussions prior to the council meeting about the possibility of postponement.

If those prior discussions about a postponement had been conducted in a public meeting, then the email exchanges would not necessarily count as a substitute. However, those discussions apparently did not take place in public meetings. One opportunity to talk publicly about the issues related to the postponement would have been the council’s regular Sunday night caucus. However, that meeting was cancelled by Hieftje.

On the standard of whether the above email exchanges were a substitute for communication that should have otherwise been made openly at the council table, I think that they were a substitute. One need not conclude that those actual exchanges qualify as “deliberations” in order to reach that conclusion. And on that basis, I think it’s a fair assessment that the exchanges do not reflect an ethical approach.

Informational and Organizational Issues

If city councilmembers are inclined to use email exchanges as a substitute for communications that should otherwise best be made publicly, then it is worth reflecting on the mechanisms available to the media and the public at large to compel the public availability of those communications.

One obvious tool is to make a request based on the Freedom of Information Act.

Based on the method with which the city of Ann Arbor appears to have complied with GLELC’s FOIA requests, the city does not  seem to be ideally prepared to deal with requests under FOIA for a modest volume of electronic records. In the GLELC corpus, the email exchanges among councilmembers that were provided under FOIA were apparently identified by requesting that councilmembers voluntarily forward them to assistant city attorney Abigail Elias.

Otherwise put, the relevant emails do not appear to have been identified through a computer server-level query, as might be reasonably expected. Even assuming that councilmembers complied in good faith with the request – a fair assumption – human error among 11 councilmembers could result in accidental failure by the city to produce records as required by law.

If the records were identified by both means – voluntary forwarding, plus a server-level request – then it’s fair to ask what purpose the voluntary forwarding served. There have been conflicting reports, but my best current understanding is that The Chronicle’s FOIA request is being completed via a server-level query.

The format of provided documents is another way to evaluate how prepared a public body is to meet FOIA reqeusts. The format of the documents provided to GLELC under FOIA was paper printouts of emails. But the 1994 case “Zeeff v. City of Ann Arbor” makes clear that the original electronic format for FOIA-ed materials can be compelled. Why not provide the format that a requester could compel anyway?

In at least some cases, the city of Ann Arbor seems to opt for needlessly complex solutions to FOIA requests. In an unrelated FOIA request made recently with which The Chronicle is familiar, a request for city staff compensation data was met by the city in the following way: (1) print out the electronic report, (2) physically mask names of personnel, (3) scan the masked document to create electronic images, (4) run an image-to-text program on the scanned image, (5) provide the resulting electronic output as the requested record. As The Chronicle was processing the material, the apparent method came to light due to image-to-text conversion errors, plus an imperfect job done in masking names.

Given the potential need to meet FOIA requests for thousands of email records, it’s thus worth reflecting on the problem from a purely information-technology point of view. Rather than respond to FOIA requests in a reactive way, one could imagine a public body taking the view that any and all records subject to FOIA would be made public as a matter of the usual workflow of that public body.

If all or most of the material that could be requested under FOIA were already publicly accessible, then a public body would be practically immune to any extra work caused by FOIA requests.

It’s worth making the distinction here between “making publicly available” and “publishing.” Take salary information, for example. If there’s a PDF file containing a list of salary information, which citizens can access online if they want to know how much the city administrator is paid, that can fairly be described as “making the information publicly available.” And that’s a reasonable state of affairs to contemplate. Somewhat less reasonable is a “publishing” scenario, where the caption to Roger Fraser’s photograph on the city of Ann Arbor’s website would include his salary.

The University of Michigan is an example of an institution that for years has made its salary information publicly available.

Short of shoving all FOIA-able material into the public realm proactively, one could contemplate a combination of technology and policy that would make compliance with FOIA requests for electronic documents more straightforward than the method apparently employed by the city of Ann Arbor. Until recently, at least, that method seemed to entail voluntary submission of records by councilmembers, printing out the material, inspection of each sheet of paper, redaction with a black marker if necessary, photocopying the stack of paper, then handing it to the requester.

Those redactions reflect exemptions, which an institution may (but is not required to) apply under the law, which include :

15.243 Exemptions from disclosure; withholding of information required by law or in possession of executive office.
Sec. 13. (1) A public body may exempt from disclosure as a public record under this act:

(a) Information of a personal nature where the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.

(h) Information or records subject to the attorney-client privilege.

(n) Communications and notes within a public body or between public bodies of an advisory nature to the extent that they cover other than purely factual materials and are preliminary to a final agency determination of policy or action. This exemption does not apply unless the public body shows that in the particular instance the public interest in encouraging frank communications between officials and employees of public bodies clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

In the spirit of a desire for a simpler approach to compliance, we posed the following challenge to two faculty members of the University of Michigan School of Information.

Challenge: For an organization subject to FOIA, design a policy standard for use and configuration of email accounts and servers to eliminate the need for any visual/manual inspection of email records in response to FOIA requests.

David Wallace is a lecturer at the school, who focuses on the role of archives in enabling and denying accountability and justice, and the computerization of government records. Professor Virginia Rezmierski’s research interests include institutional norms to address issues of privacy and security of electronic records.

Based on emailed responses from Wallace and Rezmierski, our challenge is phrased in a somewhat extreme way. They both rejected the idea that it was feasible or desirable to provide documents without visual inspection. Wrote Wallace:

… Technologically you could do wide searches but again I cannot imagine any agency releasing records in response to a FOIA request without proper screening. And in fact not screening can lead to improper disclosures of personally identifiable information or sensitive information. To my mind what is needed is a combination of sound records management combined with a transparent and open practices (not rhetoric about transparency – but real efforts at affirmative disclosure in absence of FOIA requests.)

Rezmierski, for her part, said:

… the issue that strikes me is that ALL records need to be visually reviewed before it is possible to identify any exemptions that might apply …

For a long time we have needed email to be configured in such a way that notes and communications preliminary to a decision could be managed by the writer as private, while official responses or decisions could be configured and marked in such a way as to be readily available as records. Even under such a system however, the FOIA request would have to be specific enough that it could be readily identified, and visual inspection for any potential exemptions would still most probably occur.

With respect to Rezmierski’s suggestion of configuration and marking of records “in such a way as to be readily available as records,” the FOIA law itself provides some direction, requiring that agencies subject to FOIA undertake practicable measures to facilitate separation of exempt material from non-exempt material:

15.244 Separation of exempt and nonexempt material; design of public record; description of material exempted.
Sec. 14.
…
(2) When designing a public record, a public body shall, to the extent practicable, facilitate a separation of exempt from nonexempt information. If the separation is readily apparent to a person requesting to inspect or receive copies of the form, the public body shall generally describe the material exempted unless that description would reveal the contents of the exempt information and thus defeat the purpose of the exemption.

In the case of electronic mail, one could imagine a policy, together with a technology, that would prompt the author of an email who hits “send” to flag the correspondence  in an appropriate way – a way of forcing the author of an email to categorize it, say, as “attorney-client privileged” or “personal” or “ready for publication” with a default as “ready for publication.”

Speaking to The Chronicle by phone, Rezmierski told us that she thought exclusive reliance on that approach for release of records wouldn’t work for two reasons. First, the average email author in an agency subject to FOIA would not be familiar enough with FOIA interpretation to make an accurate assessment. Second, the judgment should be based not on an individual’s desire, but rather on the public interest.

Still, Rezmierski points to her own work in this field that calls for a technical solution to allow a distinction to be maintained between “notes,” “preliminary decisions” and “official records.” To designate official records, she has suggested the application of an “electronic letterhead” to documents. One “fly in the ointment” is the reliance on the author of such documents to attach the letterhead.

Rezmierski traces part of the current challenge posed by myriad electronic documents to a historical failure to maintain the proper relationship between policy and technology. When it was recognized that email would be traveling through multiple servers, she said, we too readily accepted that email was not private communication and that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy. Instead of accepting that premise, she suggests, we could have set a policy that electronic communication should be treated just like a sealed letter with the same expectations of privacy associated with a sealed letter. From that policy we could have developed appropriate technologies to ensure that the expectation of privacy was actually met, she says.

In any case, the release of documents without review – that is, based purely on the flags or letterhead attached by document authors – is not something Rezmierski sees as feasible.

In its FOIA request for additional records, The Chronicle has specified the requested records in a way that has a similar effect to a pre-separation of exempt materials from non-exempt materials. Specifically, the way that we specified the request does not target emails to or from constituents of councilmembers (triggering possible redaction due to unwarranted intrusions of privacy). Nor does our request include communications between the city attorney’s office and councilmembers, which we suppose would have a high probability of being exempted due to attorney-client privilege.

Legal Implications: Open Meetings Act

The  Michigan Open Meetings Act provides that the public must be given notice in advance of the meetings of a public body. And the regular meetings of the Ann Arbor city council in council chambers are announced in various ways that fully comply with the act. If councilmembers email each other during such a  meeting – one which has been properly noticed – where does the potential violation of OMA lie?

The potential violation is that the emails themselves could possibly constitute a separate meeting from the one that was properly noticed – a separate meeting that would require its own notice and public access, not to mention its own minutes.

To get a clearer understanding of what it takes to constitute a meeting via email communications, The Chronicle spoke by phone with Lisa Rycus Mikalonis, an attorney with Sommers Schwartz in Southfield, Mich., who specializes in communications law, freedom of information and open meetings acts.

By way of general orientation to the issue, Mikalonis stressed that the basic legislative intent of open meetings acts is to ensure that public work is done in public view. And the spirit of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act, she continued, is “openness.”  Given that emails exchanged between councilmembers are not in public view, isn’t that – on its face – a violation of OMA?

No, says Mikalonis. There are two aspects to determining whether a “meeting” has taken place: (i) whether a quorum was reached (ii) whether the substance of the communications was related to the business of the public body.

In the case of the Ann Arbor city council, for a single email exchange to count as a “meeting” there would need to be six participants in the exchange – the council has 11 members –  and the substance of the communication would need  to be in some sense deliberative. In the  case of some of the emails that have been previously published by The Ann Arbor News – concerning golden vomit and sea turtles, for example – the best defense against a charge of an OMA violation would be to maintain that the communications amounted to horseplay, and were in no way deliberative. In my view, a defense based on the frivolous character of the exchanges is fairly compelling – many of them are uncontroversially frivolous.

However, the example we’ve laid out above – involving the possible postponement of the resolution about the underground parking garage – is less clearly non-deliberative. The communications are gossipy in flavor, to be sure – indeed, Smith’s contribution in its entirety is a winking smiley. Should a winking smiley count as a contribution to a deliberation? On its own, I’d say probably not.

Taken in aggregate, however, all the email exchanges suggest a background in which the merits of postponement were discussed by among multiple parties before the meeting. So it’s those discussions that I think could potentially warrant consideration as an OMA violation.

And it’s worth noting that the number of people involved on any one email exchange or who were a party to any one of those discussions need not necessarily achieve a quorum, in order to count as an OMA violation. Mikalonis pointed us to a 1988 case, “Booth Newspapers v. Wyoming City Council,” in which the court held that serial meetings of sub-quorum groups amounted to a “constructive quorum,” and thus violated the OMA.

But what’s crucial to the question of discussions about the possible postponement of the parking garage resolution, said Mikalonis, is the fact that no motion to postpone was ever brought at the table. If a motion had been brought, and no discussion had taken place at the table on that motion to postpone, it might be possible to argue that the decision against postponement had been made in prior conversations, confirming the nature of those conversations as deliberative, she suggested. But given that no motion to postpone was ever brought at the table, no decision was ever made on that question, so it’s moot to ask when it was made.

I would conclude then, that making a case for an OMA violation based on the exchange we have published above would require more research. That research might well show that no violation took place. On the other hand, it might show definitively that a violation did take place. It’s not an issue that The Chronicle intends to pursue at this time.

If not the letter, then I think the spirit of OMA – openness – is violated when email exchanges take place between councilmembers about matters they could just as well discuss openly at the council table. It’s not particularly important to me whether councilmembers  apologize for the frivolous emails they’ve sent in the past, nor do I attach any particular weight to their apologies – a month went by with no apologies.

What’s important is a recommitment by the Ann Arbor city council to openness and transparency. It’s not a commitment that can be articulated in emailed statement to constituents or in a radio interview. It’s a commitment that will be reflected by conducting public business in public.

Future of Transparency for the City of Ann Arbor

The one example we’ve considered in this column shows that laptop computers – as they’re currently used by councilmembers – can and do serve to screen some of the decision-making process and rationale from the public.

One approach to achieving a city government that is not just transparent, but also illuminates its citizens – so brightly that we might have to contemplate dimming it during certain times of the year to protect migratory birds – is to add even more technology to the equation.

One example: If city council members receive proposed amendment language via email from their colleagues or the city clerk during meetings, it would make sense that council chambers be equipped with wireless internet access so that members of the public can receive the same information if they choose to bring a wifi-ready device to council chambers, or if they’re watching the meeting live on Community Television Network. It would also make sense that the same information be projected on a screen so that members of the public can easily follow along.

The city’s planning commission deals with material on a regular basis that is at least as complex as that handled by the city council. Yet its members are not issued laptop computers by the city, and their meetings are run quite efficiently and transparently with only a single staff member using a laptop computer to project images and text onscreen when necessary.

So it’s not just a matter of adding more technology. It’s a matter of putting aside the use of some “private technology” – like laptop computers – in favor of “public technology” – like projectors.

It’s not a matter of promising to keep laptop computers closed when members of the public are addressing council, or refraining from sending frivolous emails to each other during meetings.

It’s a matter of reflecting continuously on the question:

Is the information on this screen I’m staring at – which by definition is important and relevant to my decision-making … because I’m staring at it during a council meeting – as equally accessible to the public as it is to me?

I think a fair answer to that question is, too often, no.

Email Corpus

The following are raw, uncorrected text files. They are made from the image-to-text processing of digital scans taken of the paper copies provided by the city of Ann Arbor in response to the GLELC FOIA request.

• pack1.txt
• pack2.txt
• pack3.txt
• pack4.txt
• pack5.txt
• pack6a.txt
• pack6b.txt
• pack6c.txt
• pack6d.txt
• pack6e.txt
• pack6f.txt
• pack6g.txt
• pack6h.txt
• pack6i.txt
• pack6j.txt
• pack6k.txt

The Chronicle was alerted to a revision to the city website’s crime data archive via the automatic email system we’ve signed up for. Anyone can subscribe to the system, and it’s customizable by topic. Readers who don’t wish to receive notifications of crime updates can simply opt out of that topic at sign up. But The Chronicle subscribes to the complete package of notifications. So we received the following note in the email yesterday:

-
From: City of Ann Arbor, MI
To: dave.askins@annarborchronicle.com
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 3:21 PM
Subject: Ann Arbor Police Crime Statistics – Dec. 14-20, 2008

You are subscribed to Neighborhood Watch for City of Ann Arbor, MI. This information has recently been updated, and is now available.

Update your subscriptions, modify your password or e-mail address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your e-mail address to log in. If you have questions or problems with the subscription service, please contact support@govdelivery.com.

This service is provided to you at no charge by City of Ann Arbor, MI.

GovDelivery, Inc. sending on behalf of City of Ann Arbor, MI · 100 N. Fifth Avenue · Ann Arbor MI 48104 · 734-994-2700

The link embedded in the email leads to the city of Ann Arbor’s neighborhood watch page, which includes a PDF archive of crime data that is divided into chunks of about two weeks per PDF. The notification yesterday was the second one we’d received. Two weeks ago, we received a similar notice. To date, we hadn’t allocated time and resources at The Chronicle for opening up PDFs with crime – partly because many of the PDFs generated by the city contain scanned images of pages, as opposed to the “native text” that allows for easy use of that data. We imagined that the crime data PDFs probably fit the scanned image pattern.

However, Ed Vielmetti forwarded to us by email the contents of the PDF, which he’d copied-and-pasted from the file. From that we concluded that the PDFs contained text, not just images of pages, and from there, we were able to assemble a single file of text containing the data, delimit it, geocode it, and map it. The key concept for mapping – a KML file – came from Vielmetti and a second-degree connection to him, Andrew Turner.

If time and resources permit, in 2009 we may provide maps of crime data from the city’s website as they become available. We’d first want to develop an efficient work process for generating them, as well as discuss with the police department the categories we’ve lumped together based on a lay person’s understanding (e.g., burglary and larceny from a vehicle are given the same color marker in the map we’ve generated above).

Technical Details

Why don’t we just use Google’s MyMaps instead of GPSVisualizer? There’s an apparent limit of 200 placemarks for Google’s MyMaps, which the year’s data easily exceeded. The 2009 strategy of creating one map for each two-week span covered by the city’s PDFs, plus the ability to assign log-in privileges to others for help in doing the work, points towards adoption of Google’s MyMaps.

Where do you get the longitude and latitude for the addresses? We submitted them to a for-now free service: BatchGeoCode. GPSVisualizer provides batch geocoding as well, but not at the level of precision required for this work. For presentation of the data, however, GPSVisualizer provides a whole range of options, including the ability to present quantified data – like campaign donations displayed on a map by donor address with a marker scaled relative to the size of the donation.

How do you get from the set of geocoded crime data to a KML file? In our case, we did a mail merge using MS Word and an MS Excel table as a data source. We’ll pause for a moment while our geek readers cough up their collective lungs laughing. It does work, although it requires using text like “LEFTANGLE” and “RIGHTANGLE” for the ubiquitous left and right angled brackets of KML, so that MS Word doesn’t try to interpret the document as something it cannot read and then crash. See “develop efficient work process” above.

How do you delimit the text, once you’ve got it out of the PDF? We used a text editor called TextWrangler, which supports grep searches, making it fairly easy to deal with records with no spaces between address numbers and street names.

Files:

MS Excel Spreadsheet of 2008 Crime Data [not complete or official]

KML file with data from Excel Spreadsheet of 2008 Crime Data [not complete or official]