Process, Procedure, and Governance in Ann Arbor

In contemplating the budget trainwreck, I suddenly realized that much of our civic despair stems from the most basic of problems.  Our system of governance is broken, not (only) because some of us disagree with some other of us or that certain personalities are dominant, but because the mechanisms to make decision-making orderly and done in such a way as to arrive at some sort of consensus are lacking.

About consensus:  I’ve heard that defined as the solution that everyone can live with.  If you are working with a group, you can reach decisions in two possible ways.  One is to take a straight-up vote.  The solutions that get 50.0001% of the vote are the winners.  One advantage of this method is that the result is unambiguous.  It makes people take responsibility for their decisions.  Also, it is efficient.  Once you cut off debate and vote, it’s over.  Decisions are made cleanly without being talked to death.

In a consensus decision, the chair or moderator looks around the room and says, “is everyone ok with that?”.  This creates a certain amount of social pressure to stay quiet, though there is always someone who will keep insisting till the rest of the group quiets him down.  Usually there will just be a few comments, some compromises will be made, and the group accepts a particular outcome.  Some people didn’t get their first preferences, but they can live with that.

Both of these have disadvantages.  With a majoritarian vote, what if the losers literally can’t live with the solution being imposed on them and are bitterly unhappy?  This leads to a tyranny of the majority situation that is guaranteed to lead to a fair amount of civic discontent.  Using the consensus method, the group may be pushed into an unwanted solution by a few strong voices that rule by intimidation.  People who would have voted “no” are induced to remain silent through social pressure.

In practice, we need to use straight-up popular votes for some things (millage votes, major ordinance changes), but most decisions being made at the local level do need to pass the consensus test.  I may not like the decision that council made last night, but if I can shrug it off with a little grumbling, we’re ok.  But if I am enraged and lose sleep nights over it, and if I am joined even by a sizable minority of my fellow citizens, then there’s trouble in (Huron) River City.

There has been a confluence of research in neuroscience, behavioral science, and evolutionary psychology that suggests that we are “hard-wired” for a sense of fairness and justice.  It is my belief that this is the reason for laws in general and why process and procedure are so important.  If we feel that our government has sorted through all the arguments, that we’ve had a chance to have our say, and that there has been an effort to be fair, usually we can “live with that”.  Sometimes process seems a little silly and often it is inconvenient.  But it is important in helping us arrive at a consensus.

As we’ve discussed before, transparency and openness is an important part of this process.  One of the redeeming facets of this bleak period in Ann Arbor’s history is that our major local media outlets are both quite aggressively pushing transparency.   The Ann Arbor Chronicle came out with a stellar piece about the actions of the city attorney in keeping “advice” to council secret.  Both the Chronicle and AnnArbor.com have been aggressive in using FOIA for council emails and other formerly secret materials.  AnnArbor.com even has a column called FOIA Friday.   I also credit AnnArbor.com, who did a FOIA on the Library Lot proposals, for turning the city around to making these public on the city website.  Ann Arbor city government has been much too secretive and prone to back-door decisions, but they seem now to be improving their ways somewhat.  There is still a good way to go.

One of the problems Ann Arbor has experienced in recent years is that we have indeed had a group of people, including some council members, who have been all too willing to use the raw exercise of power to push through an agenda even though they understood that there was no consensus.  An example was the decision to build the new city hall. There was so much palpable disagreement and unhappiness about this that a citizen petition drive for a referendum was launched (it was discontinued after collecting over 6,000 signatures of a needed 9, 400 but with no time to obtain the rest).  In the article linked to here, both city administrator Roger Fraser and then-CM Chris Easthope both cited the concept of “representative government”.  According to them, this concept means that once you vote an official into office, you have to accept any decision he makes.  Of course you can throw him out of office at the next election, but meanwhile he is free to make all decisions without any input from you.  I actually heard Easthope comment at a number of meetings that “the voters would never approve a millage to build a city courthouse”.  He may have been right, but that apparently didn’t inhibit him (or others) from pushing through the measure against considerable citizen opposition – because he had the power (votes on council) to do so.  Now we are watching that huge building go up while we are being told that we may have a choice between giving up police protection or selling off parks.  (Our fund balance, or cash reserve, was drained to support the project.) It would have been better if we had been able to vote on it.  Now we must live with the consequences of this decision that we had no part of.

What I have noted, though, is that there are process problems that are inhibiting even well-meaning council members from finding solutions to our problems through a community consensus.  Some of these are the way the council does its business, and many are related to the council-administration interface.  I hope to elaborate on these in a future post.

Ann Arbor Blogs: the Moving Finger Moves On

Blogs considerably post-date Omar Khayyam, but I was reminded of these lines of his recently:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Of course he was writing about Life And All That, of which blogs are only a rather pale reflection, but their transitory nature was brought home by the recent announcement that Arbor Update is folding.  As noted by Edward Vielmetti on AnnArbor.com, it was begun in 2004 by a group of University of Michigan (mostly) students.  (Julie Weatherbee, who has been a stalwart, is on UM staff.)  Not noted by Vielmetti is that in the early days it had a pronounced anti-townie tone.  When I happened on it perhaps a year later, I was intrigued by its New Urbanist tilt.  Many of the contributors, including Dale Winling (who founded an anti-neighborhood association called the New West Side) and Richard Murphy (aka “Murph”) were students in urban planning.  At the time Douglas Kelbaugh of that school and department was promulgating many of the same concepts and was influential in setting city policy and the Calthorpe exercise (see my review) and I found this blog (the first one I ever read, along with its fellow student-run, anti-townie blog, Ann Arbor is Overrated or AAIO) to be a challenging, if sometimes infuriating, window on a different perspective.  (I remember in particular Murph’s holding forth on the notion that homeowners should not be allowed to have curbcuts for driveways into public streets, since that took away parking for others.)

Over time, AU evolved into a useful venue for news and the pulse of what was happening in areas not reported by the Ann Arbor News.  There were some really nasty anonymous commenters and some annoying threads that ultimately required moderation (to anguished cries of Censorship!), but also some really good conversation about the topics of the day.  Julie Weatherbee also performed a considerable service in posting a summary of items that were coming up on the council agenda, with appropriate links.  But now it’ll come off my list of local media.  I’ll miss it.

AU was also a point of entry to discover other blogs.  As we’ve noted before, this expanding universe (blogosphere? whatever) of local blogs is a great way to learn about topics of special local interest.  But now we are seeing its impermanence also.  Indeed, most of the blogs listed on AU’s masthead are either gone or inactive.  Along with AAIO, this includes Larry Kestenbaum’s “Polygon, the Dancing Bear“, once a good place for political commentary but apparently an awkward fit with being the county clerk; Murph’s own Common Monkeyflower (perhaps not a good fit with being a working urban planner) and Teeter Talk (still some intermittent articles, but Homeless Dave has found a home on the Ann Arbor Chronicle).  Edward Vielmetti still maintains his venerable blog, which I still think of as Vacuum though it is not named that, but I suspect that his new role as blogmeister at AnnArbor.com has been a considerable distraction.

To some extent, the newsiness and immediacy of local blogs, not to mention the sometimes snarky commentary, have been usurped by “legitimate” online news media, like Ann Arbor Chronicle and AnnArbor.com.  AnnArbor.com even solicits volunteer contributors who are essentially bloggers.  But there are still some local blogs of interest. One that everyone is talking about today (well, everyone who is interested in local politics) is A2Politico.  The latest post announces that its previously anonymous author, Patricia Lesko, is running for mayor.  I’m curious to see whether she will be able to keep up the prodigious output of the last several months.  Another political blog is Some Other Viewpoint, unusual for this area in that it discusses Washtenaw County issues from a relatively conservative (and overtly Republican) viewpoint.   A group I’m involved with has a blog, Public Land – Public Process.   There are also two Ypsilanti blogs that are worth following.  Advance Ypsilanti is all about that city’s policies and politics.  Mark Maynard writes about many topics, often but not always local (including a recent story about the next step in Murph’s career), and usually provocative and/or entertaining.

Who knows how many of those blogs (or this one) will be around in another year?  The problem with blogging was explained to the Pope on a recent radio show: “You have to keep posting”.   AU had a longer run than most, perhaps because of its group nature. So farewell, Arbor Update.  It’s been good ta know ya.

Scott Trudeau (L) and Murph (R), enjoying victory ca. 2004; photo copyright by Griffin Reames, used with permission

UPDATE: After receiving the comment from Edward Vielmetti about the New West Side organization, I went hunting for the article I wrote about the Arbor Update bloggers back in 2005.  (I had to scan the paper copy: the Ann Arbor Observer doesn’t make digital copies generally available.)  Sure enough, it quotes Dale Winling on his efforts to establish alternative renter-based neighborhood groups and the core of AU bloggers as being against having “homeowner values” pushed on them. The Observer chose a picture from 2004, showing two of them enjoying their victory over the proposed ordinance that would have kept couches off porches, a source of visual blight to homeowners but a basic freedom to student renters.

The Two-Track Solution

To no one’s great surprise, the advisory committee for the Library Lot RFP decided to continue with the two conference center proposals.  (See the very complete account by the Ann Arbor Chronicle.)  This, in the face of some very pointed criticism of the finances of the two proposals by two staff members, who accurately pointed out that both proposals bore a great deal of risk and what assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald referred to as “contingencies”.  I’ll go into some detail on those in a future post, but meanwhile I want to point out that the makers of both of these proposals have made some effort to secure the “inside track”.

As today’s article on AnnArbor.com relates, and as we have repeatedly reported,  Valiant Partners LLC have been “working with” city officials for two years, much of it very privately.  It is clear that they were relying on a sense of acceptance and partnership to secure this deal, though they weren’t dropping any names after all the scrutiny they have been getting from us and other sources.  In their proposal, they included two letters from UM deans, though according to a post in A2Politico one of them is a former employer of Fritz Seyferth, a Valiant principal.

But they are not the only group that has connections.   As a second article from AnnArbor.com reports, the Acquest group also claims a close connection – with county administrator Bob Guenzel.  This might be expected in some ways; Guenzel has been very active in economic development issues.  He was long instrumental in the Washtenaw Development Council and was a founding board member of SPARK, which formed as the result of a merger between WDC and the SmartZone (the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti LDFA).  He was also mentioned in the Ann Arbor News as a supporter of the concept of a conference center.

Acquest gets right into name-dropping in the second paragraph of their proposal, where they say, “based upon a recent meeting with Bob Guenzel, Washtenaw County Administrator, and subsequent discussions with Hank Baier and Jim Kosteva of the University of Michigan…” (Henry (Hank) Baier is the head of facilities at UM, and James (Jim) Kosteva is its director of community relations; presumably they would have been willing to make appointments but not commitments.)  At the interviews on January 20, I sat straight up when I heard David Ong, the president of Acquest Realty Advisors, say that “Bob Guenzel initiated the idea of county participation in a conference center”, and later heard him make reference to an authority that was a partnership between the county and city.  As a former county commissioner, I am very aware of the county’s budget problems, and there had been no whisper of such a plan coming from the sitting commissioners.

But when reached by email today (January 28, 2010), Guenzel had this to say:

“Dave Ong came to see me to give me a courtesy presentation of the Acquest proposal. He asked me whether the County might be willing to be part of an authority that operated a conference center. I said we might. Nothing else has been said or done about this. I made no promises. Of course, I do not have the authority to make any promises to the group. Anyway, there is nothing going on at the county on this issue.”

Density and the Conference Center

As the debate about what will happen on Top of the Parking continues, part of it is being conducted on a familiar Ann Arbor battleground.  After we were told earlier that the RFP Advisory Committee’s main concern was the financial benefit to the city, given the city’s big budget troubles, suddenly the old division between proponents of parks vs. “density” has emerged.  Indeed, when some members of the advisory committee say the word “park”, it is spat out like a bad word.   But a major thrust on defining the fate of the former Library Lot as being about density has come from a strange quarter: the Ann Arbor District Library board and its director, Josie Parker.

As we reviewed earlier, the new look at the Library Lot and its possible uses began with the AADL, which began in 2006 to do strategic planning toward a new library addition.  The DDA and Council both responded by beginning to plan for an underground parking structure, ostensibly to assist the AADL.  But only two months after the DDA approved a plan to build the structure, the AADL (in November 2008) voted to suspend their construction plans.  As the city has progressed toward making a decision about the use of the surface above the parking structure, the AADL has been the elephant in the room, often alluded to but rarely heard from.  But at the December 21 AADL board meeting, when the board engaged in a rather tentative discussion about the proposals on the table, board chair Rebecca Head suddenly came out with the classic “greenbelt link” density argument.  Her statement (paraphrased from my incomplete notes) was approximately this: an open space option was not a sustainable choice for the library lot.  A basic tenet of sustainability is that density should be in the city and open space should be in “appropriate” (her word) places, namely outside the city.  The greenbelt initiative was to place parks and greenbelt around the city, and infill should take place within it.

This theme was then repeated by Josie Parker at the interviews conducted by the RFP committee on January 19, when the Dahlmann open space proposal was being discussed.  She was asked her opinion about the proposal and stated that she believed the greenbelt came with the assumption that density is a priority in the city.

At the advisory committee’s January 21 meeting, where they were reviewing proposals in light of the interviews, DDA director Susan Pollay made an unexpectedly vehement statement opposing a park or open space on the lot and characterizing density as a source of  “energy” on behalf of the library.  Pollay, who has been working closely with Parker since the days of planning the library expansion, said that open space would not be used there and that it would “leach off” the library, that traffic was needed to support the library and bring energy to it.  The library, she said, is the true community gathering space and only the two hotel/conference center projects were “legitimate” projects that will support the library in its growth.  (My reaction was to wonder why the library needs a hotel to bring people to it – it is a draw in itself.)  Then outgoing community services administrator Jayne Miller chimed in with a riff on how the city had been trying for years to get downtown density.  She said that the greenbelt initiative gave the city a direction to increase density and they had been working on it for years with the A2D2 process and other efforts and why would we waste that when we had an opportunity to increase downtown density.

As I reviewed in an article first published in the Ann Arbor Observer in December 2005,  city voters approved a millage (popularly known as the Greenbelt millage) in 2003. The resolution is worth rereading in its entirety, as is the ballot language. See here. There is no mention anywhere of density or balancing growth within and without the city.  Instead, the resolution leads with this resounding whereas statement:

Whereas, The City of Ann Arbor has long been identified as desirable place (sic) to live, work and visit in part because of the presence of parks, open space and natural habitats, watercourses and farmland in and around the Ann Arbor community;

Note that part about “in and around the Ann Arbor community”?  Yet development proponents have ever since been claiming that in approving the greenbelt millage, voters also approved increased density within the city while open space belongs outside it.  This is what I have termed the “greenbelt link”.  (See my 2005 article for a lengthy discussion with quotes.)

Pollay is understandably frustrated, since the DDA’s mission is to promote downtown development and yet the only successful project (at least, one that has been built) it has managed so far on city property is Ashley Mews.  The Three-site Plan, which would have built a parking structure on the city lot at First and William and developed the Kline’s Lot and First and Washington public lots (this was reviewed relatively recently by the Ann Arbor Chronicle), was truncated so that the only completed plan was the City Apartments/Village Green project on the First and Washington lot, currently delayed by lack of financing.  A great deal of venom was expressed by DDA board members at the time against the Sierra Club and neighborhood advocates who succeeded in taking First and William off the table. (The Kline’s Lot project was not seen as feasible at all, given the market.)  The Downtown Residential Task Force, which published its report in 2004 (available here), had its main impetus from the DDA (and its then board chair was the chair of the task force).  The DRTF provided the meat of the argument for downtown density and its inception was at the same time as the greenbelt millage initiative.  Clearly in the minds of many in the development community, the two were joined, and Pollay has been one of the strongest proponents of this notion.  But that is not what the voters saw on the ballot, or in the campaign literature.  Even so, the usage of the term “density” has slipped into being synonymous with “development”, which is not accurate.  Most planning documents and studies (including the DRTF) mean “residential density” when they use the term – in other words, that more people live in the area, not that tall buildings sprout up.  If you accept the greenbelt link (which I emphatically don’t), you’d be asking where all the condominiums or apartments are, not looking for hotel and meeting rooms.

Of course, another thinly veiled reason to oppose open space next to the library is its history of difficulties with the troubled population of the old YMCA.  Before the old Y was emptied, some of the tenants with drug, alcohol, and other socially undesirable problems often hung around the entrance to the library. Liberty Plaza, the only open space downtown, has also had a history with the homeless or “vagrants”. Fears of a recurrence of such problems were repeatedly alluded to by RFP committee member Eric Mahler’s references to “security problems”.  In response to a question from Stephen Rapundalo at the interviews, about “less desirable elements”,  Parker asserted that the space might not be well maintained: “it is our experience that people do not clean up after themselves – you have to monitor them”.

Also at issue are the economics of a park or open space vs. a development.  It was frequently mentioned at advisory committee meetings that parks take operational (maintenance) money that the city doesn’t have.  It has been assumed that the development proposals will bring a positive economic benefit (but more about that in a future post).  Miller, in a rather startling outburst, said at the last meeting that she wanted the ice rink removed even from the Valiant proposal.  “You don’t make money off effing free skating!”  (Really, that is what I heard.)

Still, in the end the open space vs. density argument is really about two competing visions of what kind of city Ann Arbor will be in the future.  Is it to be a gracious community where quality of life is defined by community festivals in the open air?  Or a bustling center of activity with visitors bringing wealth to enlarge business opportunities?  The dichotomy is much more nuanced than that, obviously.  But at heart the competing visions are what add passion to the debate.

UPDATE: The Ann Arbor Chronicle has now published an account of the Jan. 21 advisory committee meeting that quotes a number of the discussions.

The Old Y, the Conference Center, and the Inside Track

As we discussed some months ago, there are intriguing links between the failure of the plan to replace housing at the old Y site and the current proposals to have a conference center across the street at the Library Lot.  Our earlier article recounted some of the history of William Street Station, the development proposed by  HDC Construction Company  in response to the City’s RFP to replace the supportive housing lost when the old Y was closed.  The project was voted down by council on November 5, 2007, in an action that a contemporary account said left the developer “stunned”.  Now HDC is suing the city.  The lawsuit reminds us that the developer had by then obtained $18.5 million in low-income housing tax credits from MSHDA (the state housing authority) and a $7.5 million MEGA (Brownfield) grant.  Those were both lost with the cancellation of the project.  Could it be that what killed the project was its last iteration, in which HDC proposed to build a hotel and conference center as the money-making part of the project?

One problem that the developers faced was that the main source of subsidy for the affordable housing, the low-income tax credits, are only effective for 15 years.  But the council wanted the supportive housing in perpetuity.  Another problem was that through 2007, the leading edge of the Michigan recession and general decline in housing demand made the original plan’s viability questionable.  (It would have combined market-rate housing with the supportive housing tower.)  So HDC came up with a revised plan that would have combined a hotel-conference center, the housing, and the bus terminal (don’t forget that this was also a joint project with AATA).  Only weeks before its death, a revised site plan for the project was approved by the Planning Commission.

Could it be that several people on the inside track began to look at this concept and conclude that it might be better without the distressed population of the supportive housing tower and the bus station? After all, a “world-class” facility is…classy. We don’t have a record of the conversations going on behind closed doors in late October 2007, but they can be imagined. Even then there were occasional news stories about efforts to find other locations for the housing. One email conversation between CM Leigh Greden and CM Margie Teall is available by virtue of the citizen FOIA project.   The exchange took place on November 5, 2007. (Teall and Greden apparently voted to extend HDC’s option, though mayor John Hieftje voted against it.)  One interesting statement is, “John H wants the units outside downtown, scattered. If HHSAB comes up with a statement that the units don’t need to be downtown, it frees up strings on the Y site.” The significant thing about this observation is that it was made on the same night that the William Street Station project was killed.

Two players who may have known more about what was being said than even Greden and Teall were Jesse Bernstein, the former president and CEO of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, and Bob Guenzel, the county administrator.  Consider the timeline:

October 2007:  The site plan for the William Street Station hotel and conference center is approved at Planning Commission.

November 2007:  The project is killed.

December 2007:  Bernstein and Guenzel have coffee at the Cafe Verde and decide a conference center is a great idea (as reported in the Ann Arbor News some months later).

April 2008:  Bernstein organizes a forum to discuss a conference center and Roger Fraser is quoted as saying he wouldn’t mind seeing a conference center over the Library Lot.  But even as the first discussions are breaking in the News, an email discussion with DDA director Susan Pollay links Bernstein with two later members of the Valiant partnership (they of the Secret Plan).  Fritz Seyferth and Bruce Zenkel have already, as of April 9, 2008, had one group of prospective investors tour Ann Arbor and are now working with a second.

By December 2008, as reported by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the council is hearing about other possible sites to locate the 100 units of supportive housing.  Two of them belong to Washtenaw County.  At this time, I heard anecdotal accounts that Guenzel was meeting with commissioners to win acceptance for the county making one of them available (it never came to pass).

Thanks to another story (January 18, 2010)  in the Chronicle, we now learn that Fraser had an early version of the Secret Plan at a council Budget and Labor Committee meeting and was told by the councilmembers there to “put it on the shelf”.  But instead, he presented it at the January 2009 council retreat.

The January 18 Chronicle account elicited a remarkable addition from CM Sabra Briere (see comment #7), with an account of a December 2009 encounter with Bernstein.  He had asked to meet with her privately, apparently to complain about the ongoing RFP process.  She related,

“Bernstein said he, Fraser and Hieftje had met with people from Valiant. The Valiant people had asked what they could do for the City. The ‘vision’ that had emerged from this meeting was that the City wanted a conference center … Bernstein said he felt betrayed. He said that Valiant’s proposal for a conference center was a consensus project, and that it was not fair that Valiant should have to jump through all of these hoops.”

All this makes it clear that there was an inside track and that the participants had hoped that the Valiant proposal would be accepted without too much fuss.  Since last summer, the process has instead been becoming more and more open to discussion.  It is a test now of the current council (many of whom were not involved with the inside story) as to whether the Valiant proposal will in fact be accepted despite the considerable risk it would involve to the city.  (Even the Secret Plan says that most conference centers have to be subsidized.)  It will probably always be a mystery how much this concept had to do with the failure of the William Street Station project. But maybe we’ll now be running on a fully public and accountable track.  Putting everything about the RFP on the city website is a great start, and the RFP Advisory Committee has made meetings open to the public and even a chance for public questions at the interviews.  What a nice thought for a new year.

The Top of the Parking Decision

Winter scene from the Dahlmann Ann Arbor Town Square proposal

There has already been plenty of outrage expressed about the decision by the Library Lot advisory committee (formally the RFP advisory committee) to drop the open space options for what I am now calling the Top of the Parking (the top of the underground parking structure to be built at the site of the former Library Lot).    Commenters to the piece by the Ann Arbor Chronicle (oddly, there has been no coverage of the recent events by AnnArbor.com) and members of email listservs are criticizing the decision.  As we also reported, the committee eliminated the two proposals, namely the Dahlmann Ann Arbor Town Square and the Ann Arbor Community Commons, on the basis that they did not benefit the city financially.  Dahlmann offered to hand over $2.5 million in cash to the city, while the Commons proposal listed a number of public sources for funding and also suggested that community support (from private donors) would be forthcoming.  But the committee noted that neither one had provisions for ongoing maintenance and that the Dahlmann millions would not be enough to develop the plans provided. (Recall that the city has now posted both conceptual and cost proposals on its RFP website.)

But as we noted in a previous post on this subject,  the requirements of the RFP are both very broad and very simple.  They are: beneficial use of the site (public space), environmental benefits (LEED, stormwater, etc.), and financial return.  I asked at the time whether a project that filled the first two extremely well but not the third would be considered, especially since it reads: “In the absence of other considerations, the City has a fiduciary responsibility to obtain fair market value upon the sale of City assets (my emphasis).”

The selection criteria as outlined by the RFP don’t seem to take the first two criteria into account.  Here they are:

Note that these criteria presuppose a development project.  Also,  it is curious that the Cost Proposal specifies a lease, as though this is the only anticipated result.  Nevertheless, it says that the “cost proposal” is only weighted as 10% of the evaluation criteria.  By summarily dismissing the open space proposals because they did not apparently fill this one criterion, the committee made the “cost proposal” equal to 100% weighting.

It is time for us all to take a deep breath and to examine what the real issues are here.  Here is a preliminary list.

1. What is the best use of this site for the benefit of Ann Arbor?

Clearly, members of the committee (especially Councilmember Rapundalo, who was never shy about his bias) have concluded that the answer is “Something to fill the budget gap”.  Other people are saying, “A conference center, because it will bring business and it is needed”.  Many members of the public are saying, “An important public area that can function like New York’s Central Park and make the whole of downtown a better place to be”.  But we have never had that discussion. Not just about what different people want.  About what will really benefit the city, its residents, and its businesses best over the long run.

2. What should be the process in making the decision?

Council rushed into this RFP after the existence of the “Secret Plan” (see earlier post describing it) became more widely known.  This proposal for a conference center had been floating around city hall for what is now over a year without any public disclosure.  With the RFP, there has been at least some grudging effort at better transparency, with the RFP website, open committee meetings, a plan for public input at the interviews, and even posting the proposals in full on the website (after both AnnArbor.com and private citizens visited the city with FOIAs).

But we have never had a public discussion about what the best use of the “Library Lot” (now the Top of the Parking) is for Ann Arbor.

How would we do that?  Obviously, some other way than rushing through a decision on a tight timeline designed to facilitate a massive development.  The classic way would be to have a series of facilitated meetings and allow the public or even a structured group of “stakeholders” to review all possibilities, try to look ahead to what kind of future we wanted and what future events we think will impact us most (not an easy job, predicting the future).  As flawed as the Calthorpe process was, I am rather nostalgic about it now since there was some effort to bring in various viewpoints; but I think the public did not behave well enough for those who would direct Ann Arbor’s future according to their own wishes.  (I reviewed this briefly in this article.)

3. Will any of the present development proposals really benefit the city financially?

This will, of course, be subject to a lot of analysis and study.  I haven’t had time to study the cost proposals in depth yet, and I’m glad the committee is considering hiring a consultant for that purpose.  But we need to be careful how the terms are defined.  We’ve heard a lot of “smoke and mirrors” finance plans lately at both the national and local level.   It is possible for financial projections to look very positive until one examines the assumptions.  We’ve already been subjected to several very dubious financial decisions for the city regarding development (the city hall and the underground parking structure).  Remember the famous Disraeli quotation, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”?  (Apparently he is not actually recorded to have said it.)  Accounting devices with fallacious underlying assumptions have them all beat out.  I think I am correct in saying that the city has never succeeded in a public-private partnership that actually paid off. (If you know of one, please inform me – I’d really like to know.)

4. Even if the accounting looks good, can Ann Arbor really support a conference center and do future events look favorable for this path?

This is going to need a lot of study, comparisons with other cities, and discussion about future trends.  Not something for a quick decision, yet many people appear to have made it already.

5. Should the budget crisis be driving this decision?

I’m as concerned about city finances as perhaps anyone.  I’m such a worrier that I even ran for council last year after retiring from the county Board of Commissioners and now I’m writing this blog.  But there is something craven and low about the suggestion that in order to keep our city afloat, we should sell off our best real estate rather than use it for building a future city that gives us sustenance as a community.    After all, after your family has sold off your antique furniture and Grand-dad’s gold watch, you still need to find a way to keep your household going from day to day.  Selling our assets is a short-term solution at best.  At worst, we may enter into arrangements where we are played as the fools and take the risk so that others may make money.  That would be piling insult on injury.

I’d also like to note that there are a number of studies out there showing that a really prime public space can have truly beneficial economic effects.  We have not planned the south 5th-Division area as an area and looked at what its future could be.  There are many pieces in the air and who is to say that the open space is not the best solution economically? Further, proponents of the open space plans never had an opportunity to make a case as to how that space could be maintained or what its overall financial impact would be.

I hope that the council will take responsibility for stepping back from the brink and allowing a full discussion of what we are doing with one of our prime pieces of real estate.  Anyone who feels as I do should write and/or call their council representatives and the mayor and ask them to give us a break.

UPDATE: According to a story in the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the mayor says that council might consider the open space proposals too.

SECOND UPDATE: The Chronicle has a story about the Ann Arbor District Library Board meeting in which the Library Lot proposals are discussed.

THIRD UPDATE:  Peter Allen, ever the downtown development booster, says in a story on Concentrate that he sees the Library Lot as “downtown’s Diag”.  Many of us think of the Diag as open space but he means a hotel and conference center.

FOURTH UPDATE: A group of citizens has sent a letter to the mayor and council asking for a better public process to decide the fate of the Library Lot.  It also requests an opportunity for the open space proposals to be  reviewed.

FIFTH UPDATE: The DDA has now approved $50,000 to hire a financial consultant to advise the RFP committee.  Peter Allen is quoted as saying that we are about to make a “timeless, 100-year decision about what is it that makes a great, great city”.  We’re in agreement there, Peter.

SIXTH UPDATE: In a remarkable email exchange (pdf available here), Stephen Rapundalo defends the RFP committee’s process in response to a message from Eric Lipson.

SEVENTH UPDATE: Process issues have been part of the discussion and the question of whether the use of the Library Lot has been adequately discussed.  It is instructive to look at the 1991 Luckenbach Study (available here) – conducted by the same architect now part of the Library Lot parking structure team.

Library Lot: Open Space Option Dropped

The Library Lot advisory committee eliminated both open space options within the first few minutes of their meeting today (December 18).  The reason was that they would not make money for the city.

Details to follow in an update.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle has a very complete account of the meeting.

UPDATE: See the Chronicle story for a comprehensive account of the meeting.  But here are some important highlights:

1. The next meeting of the advisory committee is January 8.  At that time they will review the answers to questions sent the four developers (remember, the two open space proposals are off the table).  There was a hint that they might eliminate one or more development proposals.

2. The interviews will be during the day (starting at 9:00 a.m.) on January 20th.  The public is invited.  Location not yet certain.  With an apparent nod to public input, the proposers will be given 30 minutes for a presentation, 30 minutes for questions from the panel, and, remarkably, 30 minutes for public questions (to be taken League of Women Voters-style from index cards).

3. Meanwhile, the DDA Partnership committee (composed of DDA board members and council members) has proposed that the DDA should pay for a financial consultant to help the committee with the fine points of the financial aspects of the proposals.  (To my mind, a very good idea, since none of us wants to see the city sucked into a deal whereby we take all the risks and the developer gets all the cash.)  Susan Pollay, the DDA executive director,  listed four points (my paraphrases):

a. “Post-financial meltdown”: is the project feasible and does it make financial sense?  Would a bank give them money?

b. Are the project teams financially solvent?  Or are they overdrawn on other projects? Again, would a bank find them creditworthy?

c. What is a realistic timeline?  These are complex projects with other partners possibly involved.  So that the council can evaluate it, they need a realistic idea of a timeline.

d. Have similar projects been done in other cities similar to Ann Arbor?  What works in a medium-sized city?  Ann Arbor has not had a conference center so it is helpful to pull out some information.  (Ed. note: not all these proposals are for conference centers.)

Reaction to this proposal was first cautious, then enthusiastic, as it became apparent that DDA would provide the money and arrangements and leave the conclusions to the committee.  But Rapundalo muddled the charge to the consultant by insisting that they should also handle the public input problems (a very different task).  The actual responsibilities were left rather indefinite.

Also indefinite was the timeline for this consultant (possibly a firm with multiple talents) to do its task.  Problem: in order to hire a consultant, the  DDA board must act to authorize a Request for Quotations, or RFQ, but the committee wants to interview on the 20th of January – and the DDA board doesn’t meet until the first week of each month.    Pollay also stressed that the consultant should come from outside the community so that there was no whisper of conflict of interest (even through secondary connections).  Further, the firm chosen needs to be aware of the needs of municipalities.  The objective is to get the maximal benefit for the city.  But the question was left unresolved of how to reconcile the need for a careful selection process for the consultant and the ongoing rush by the committee to have recomnendations for council by February.

4. It was evident throughout the meeting that Rapundalo (who is chairing the committee) is very anxious to eliminate contenders.  He brought up this point over and over, including the idea of eliminating them on the basis of their questions and having the consultant eliminate some.  Also, he mentioned that perhaps the interview process will not be so lengthy because some will be eliminated by then.  At the first meeting on December 4 and at this one, he was the person who stated unequivocally that the project must be a moneymaker for the city, because of budget problems.  He moved rapidly to exclude any possibility of the open space proposals being considered.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that he has a particular outcome in mind.

The Fog of Plans (II)

We complained earlier about “the fog of plans”, resulting from too many high-level planning initiatives in Ann Arbor.  Some of these have moved along. As reported by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the A2D2 zoning ordinance came up for a final vote and passed on November 16 (see also the Chronicle’s story on the council caucus for a very useful chronology; link to Ann Arbor City website with ordinance revisions.)  As also detailed by the Chronicle, speakers at the caucus and public comment on November 16 entreated the council to revise and pass the accompanying design guidelines, but to no avail.  (It is estimated that revised design guidelines will require 8-12 months more work.) But Council voted on December 7 to send the Area, Height and Placement study back to the Planning Commission for consideration of possible changes to reflect public comment during the summer.

The consolidated master plan (aka “City of Ann Arbor Master Plan Land Use Element”) about which we objected strenuously in the previous post was passed without dissent on November 5. But now the effort to remake completely the entire planning and zoning context of the city continues.  According to Jayne Miller, the director of Community Services,  the Phase 2 Master Plan revision is currently scheduled to begin January 2010.  Remember, the point of a consolidated master plan was to make it easier to revise?  And to help that along, the Zoning Ordinance Reorganization project launched with several presentations in December. The ZORO outline makes the agenda chillingly clear.

The City is undertaking a multi-phase initiative to consolidate and then update its land use plans
and codes.

1. First, the four area master plans have been consolidated into a single master plan, making future revisions easier.
2. Second, the zoning ordinance and other development-related ordinances will be reviewed for technical changes to improve clarity, organization, and user-friendliness, setting the stage for future amendments.
3. Third, the master plan land use element will be reviewed for relevancy and appropriateness of future land use recommendations and planning principles.
4. Fourth, and finally, the zoning and development-related ordinances will be reviewed for substantive changes to standards and regulations to reflect and implement the revised master plan land use element.

This initiative brings up several questions.  Who “ordered” all this re-examination of our planning context?  There is a clear vision here.  Whose? And what is it?  There are some indications, as we will be speculating.  But here is my diagnosis as to the intent and motivations.  (I’ll have to justify my conclusions over many posts.)

1. The intent is to bring the master plans and zoning ordinances of the city into concurrence with the land use recommendations of the Ann Arbor Transportation Plan Update.
2. The AATPU fulfills the vision of Mayor John Hieftje’s Model for Mobility and promotes the concept of Transit-Oriented Development.
3. This forecasts a much higher city population in a much denser city.
4. It also supports the business of development.

But the purpose of planning and zoning is supposed to be that it enhances the quality of life for the city in accordance with community wishes. As we said earlier, the classic model is that planners spend months working with a citizen-based committee to update a master plan, with plenty of public input, so that it captures as best as possible the wishes of the community for how it will look in the future.  This is called the “vision”.  The planners then put their skills to work fleshing out that vision in workable form.

But we have turned this model on its head.  Instead, we have a driving vision that is being fleshed out by all the technical assistance that it needs – and the public is being instructed in it after the fact. And this constant pressure is wearing on the citizens who care about the city’s future. The vision many of us share is that of the city as a neighborhood-friendly place that offers a good quality of life to its residents and a real sense of local community.   Here is the way I stated it in a campaign flyer last year.

We live in a lovely town, with green spaces and parks, historic buildiings and attractive neighborhoods.  This is home because of the community we have created here.  That sense of community is rooted in our neighborhoods as well as in the networks of interest and affiliation we create around issues like social equity, environmental stewardship, affordable housing, and the arts.  Locally owned businesses add to our sense of place and community by offering services with a human face.

The complexity and scope of the many kinds of changes now being considered require real study, and responding to them requires a great deal of time.  It means noting possible consequences of individual items or the plan as a whole, preparing careful responses, and communicating with Planning Commission, staff, and council, as well as appearing at public meetings, public hearings, and public comment (which requires signing up).  If that last sentence sounds whiny, it is not on my behalf that I say it, but in awe and admiration for the many Ann Arbor citizens who have stepped up to this task.  For example, a large committee (with the able facilitation of Ray Detter),  recently spent many evenings going over the draft design guidelines word by word, finally presenting council with a fully marked-up draft.

I was also particularly impressed with the statements that Hugh Sonk, the president of the Sloan Plaza Condominium Association, presented to council.  He was asking that the north side of Huron be zoned D2 instead of D1. His statements combined careful technical detail (such as discussion of building heights, other buildings along the corridor, traffic considerations, etc.) with heartfelt expressions of love for the city.  I’ve attached one in its entirety but here are a couple of quotes from it that I found particularly moving. First, he noted the strong attachment that both long-term residents and many UM alumni have for the city, and says, “There is a broad community concern that the character of this town is in jeopardy, and steps must be taken soon to prevent irreversible damage to the town we love.”  Then,

At Sloan Plaza we were the pioneers of downtown living, having lived here for 24 years. We respectfully request that Council take serious consideration of the long-term negative impact of excessive building heights on the quality of life downtown, and pay close attention to the recommended density limits of the Calthorpe Report, and temper those in reaction to recent construction by the University. Calthorpe was the one participant that had no vested interest in the outcome of the study. Somewhere during the implementation of the study, some of the key points and goals were lost, and the wishes of developers have overridden the recommendations of consultants, and the will of the people.

Unfortunately, after many hours of discussion, the council passed the A2D2 zoning ordinance with the D1 designation for north Huron intact.

In the next post we’ll discuss the ZORO project.

Ann Arbor’s Media Online at PBS

A story on AnnArbor.com today features, among other bits, an online-only clip from PBS Newshour about Ann Arbor’s media.  Amusingly, the only reader interviewed is a UM sophomore, who says she doesn’t miss the Ann Arbor News much.  But Ed Vielmetti is also interviewed, as are Mary Morgan and Dave Askins of the Ann Arbor Chronicle.  (Dave is shown working at the Workantile Exchange.)  Not mentioned is Ann Arbor’s vibrant blogging culture.

AATA’S Uncertain Future

As we indicated in the previous post, there were intimations at the recent council budget retreat of major changes in the very structure of how the city delivers services and touches lives.  One of the most startling proposals was the notion of “repurposing” some millages that were previously approved by the voters for very specific services, including the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority millage, which has traditionally paid mostly for bus service within Ann Arbor.  Suddenly a lot of different people have plans for that millage, and they are not compatible.  If city officials succeed in achieving the goal of “repurposing” the millage, the future of our city bus system is in question.

AATA board member Ted Annis, who has hoped to reduce the tax bill for AATA for some time, would like to see a county-wide authority replace the current city authority and run the city bus service on a single county-wide millage while eliminating the city millage.  But others don’t share his vision.  He forgot one of the pillars of tax theory: never let a secure line of revenue get away from you.  Ann Arbor’s millage was voted in as a charter amendment on April 2, 1973.  The actual language approved by the voters was as follows:

“Shall the Charter be amended to require the levy of a tax of two and one-half mills annually for the purpose of providing funds for operating and equipping a public transportation system for the city?”

Since then, the millage has been eroded by the requirements of the Headlee Amendment to a little over 2 mills.  But because it is in the city charter, it never has to be renewed and can only be removed by a vote of the people. In contrast, most modern millage issues have a fixed time limit.  Local transportation issues (under Public Acts 55 or 196) usually have to be renewed every five years.  So the AATA millage is a little gem that few in government would surrender easily.

But though AATA was originally voted in and  incorporated as a body to provide bus service to Ann Arbor, it has been expanding its reach for some time, running buses out to other communities under Purchase of Service Agreements (POSAs).  The costs of these are partly paid for by Federal and state funds, but there is a charge to the various municipalities thus served, who are not paying the tax that Ann Arbor citizens do. As I described in a previous article written a year ago, there have been numerous discussions about AATA becoming a county-wide authority.  The AATA board, which is appointed by the mayor, took a straw vote at a May 2008 workshop to work toward becoming a regional authority.  In late 2008, the board heard from an attorney, Jeff Ammon, who has specialized in the conversion of local to regional transportation authorities.   Things went slowly until the new CEO Michael Ford was installed.  On November 18, 2009, the board voted to move toward becoming a countywide system.  On December 8, they really rolled out the carpet and the canopy and invited the community to a meeting at Washtenaw Community College with croissant sandwiches and experts.  Their attorney, Jerry Lax, and Jeff Ammon prepared some very helpful and clear materials to explain the ins and outs of becoming an “Act 196″ authority.  This is the Public Act 196 under which regional transportation authorities are organized (AATA is organized under Public Act 55).

As the illustration shows, there are three basic models: the “service contract” (which is essentially what AATA has been doing), the “donut”, in which the city authority would remain separate from the county millage and maintain its current local service using the city millage, and the “layer cake”, in which the city retains its existing millage but also joins the county entity, with various service contracts between the city and the rest of the county, but with the county millage providing a stable funding for all other transit needs for the region.  Note that all three models require the use of the Ann Arbor perpetual millage to maintain Ann Arbor bus service.

But city officials have some other ideas about the use of that millage.  Indeed, it is clear that they have been casting an envious eye at that little pot of cash for some time.  In 2008, with little fanfare, the designation on the property tax bill changed from “AATA” to “Mass transit”.  Meanwhile, the millage is now shown as part of the General Fund, though, as city adminstrator Roger Fraser said at the budget retreat, “it is an amount over which you (council) have no control or discretion”.  One of his “suggestions” (he declined to call it a recommendation yet) was to “reduce or repurpose the general fund support for AATA”.  He noted that the council would have to use those funds for a public transportation system, and that it could not be used for streets.   Tom Crawford, the city’s chief financial officer, said that the city was not legally required to send the funds to the AATA.

So what would the city use the funds for if not for the services offered by the AATA? Multimodal transportation was named. In later discussion, it was pointed out that after an AATA conversion to an Act 196 authority, the funds from the Ann Arbor millage could be used for the local connector study, the east-west rail, or WALLY. This would be the next step to fulfill Mayor John Hieftje’s vision, as first expressed in the 2006 “Mayor’s Model for Mobility”.  He advocated a muscular approach to many forms of transportation other than the automobile, i.e., multimodal transportation.  With the firm hand of transportation coordinator Eli Cooper guiding it, the policy was fleshed out in the Ann Arbor Transportation Plan Update, passed by council on May 5, 2009. (A copy of the large file for the plan is found here. ) The resolution for the “connector study”, for which the council appropriated $80,000 from the General Fund on June 15, 2009, states that “The Ann Arbor Connector is intended to provide a rapid-transit linkage between the proposed east-west, Ann Arbor to Detroit, and north-south, Ann Arbor to Howell, regional commuter rail systems, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) and University of Michigan (UM) local transit service.”  The Ann Arbor Chronicle has provided a good chronology of its history, that also explains the AATA’s payment of $320,000 to support this study.  Clearly the study is meant as the first implementation of the AATPU’s signature route plan.

As the AATPU states, “This connector would look to provide a high-speed connection between the two rail stations (the Wally on the west edge of the downtown and the Ann Arbor to Detroit relocated station along Fuller Road). The question of connecting potentially transferring passengers will need to be resolved, possibly with a bus or fixed guideway transfer connection or with the development of connecting tracks, a common station and new rail facilities. It is recommended that coordination between these two commuter rail services and their existing or potential train stations will be needed in the long term time period in order to efficiently promote commuter rail within the city of Ann Arbor.”

The first step in realizing this vision has already been taken. As explained by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the council has already approved contracts for preliminary design of the Fuller Road Station (previously the Fuller Intermodal Transit Station, or FITS).  Those contracts with the design firm JJR are for approximately $650,000.  But according to AnnArbor.com, the total cost of the project is estimated at $40-45 million, with the city to pay 22% of that.

Here is what the city has spent directly on FITS plans for 2009 (not included are UM contributions):

Item	Date	Amount
Street Repair Millage Capital Budget	5-Nov-09	$64,564
Sewage Disposal System Operating Budget	5-Nov-09	$46,664
FY 2010 Major Street Fund Operating Budget	17-Aug-09	$54,621
FY 2010 Alternative Transportation Capital Budget	17-Aug-09	$54,621
FY 2010 Economic Development Fund Reserves	17-Aug-09	$104,742
Total to date	10-Dec-09	$325,212

Clearly this expansive vision is going to be hungry for dollars.  Cooper has been vague when questioned about funding sources.  Cost of the total plan is estimated in the AATPU as $185 million without the signature routes included. That would be divided among the city, AATA, and the state department of transportation (MDOT).  The $45-50 million for FITS is also not included.  So when city officials say “multimodal”, the dollar signs start to spin.  Access to the AATA millage would be a g0od start.  Sue McCormick, who occupies a place on the AATA board despite also being a city employee (a case of incompatibility of office that really should be challenged on legal grounds), was very alert at the December 8 AATA Planning and Development committee meeting.  When the group was discussing use of an MDOT equipment grant (probably the last for a while, since MDOT is out of money) for new buses, she asked whether the grant was limited to that – or could it be used for multimodal?  McCormick could be excused for that, since as the Public Services department head she has already seen over $160,000 taken from the infrastructure funds (roads and sewers) that she is responsible for to feed FITS.

The timetable calls for AATA to have new articles of incorporation as an Act 196 approved by mid-January of next year, and for council to adopt a resolution dissolving the old AATA “because it has no more assets and no longer does business”.  Could that be the signal for transfer of the city’s millage to multimodal projects?  (Crawford is probably correct that this would be legal, since it would still be for a “public transportation system”.)  And how will our bus service be funded then?

What has not been discussed much lately is when a millage vote across the county will be held. A preliminary survey indicated a lukewarm response to the idea across the county.  Ironically, since AATA has been subsidizing the Ypsilanti area, the eastern part of the county had a more negative reaction than did the Ann Arbor area.

The potential consequences are enormous. AATA has traditionally been “the bus service”.  It is also a very important means of transportation to the disabled and elderly, via what are called in the trade “demand services”.  In Ann Arbor that is A-Ride, a “shared-ride, door-to-door transportation service for individuals who are prevented from using AATA fixed-route bus service due to a disability.”  AATA buses are also low-floor vehicles with accommodations for people in wheelchairs or who use walkers, etc.  As the only public transportation in town, AATA is also essential for mobility of  low-income people, people without drivers’ licenses, or anyone else for whom driving is not an option, even for a moment.  In the recent years all of us who live or work in Ann Arbor have been encouraged to “take the bus” instead of driving, especially to downtown (we have an agency devoted to this, getDowntown).  By doing so we hope to save energy, reduce congestion, and avoid taking up parking places.  But with the recent emphasis on commuters coming in to Ann Arbor, the intracity routes have been under pressure.  If we are dependent only on a county millage, this trend will accelerate.  And if the millage vote fails, will there still be a city bus system at all?

UPDATE: The Ann Arbor Chronicle has now published a thorough account of the special meeting on December 8.

SECOND UPDATE: AnnArbor.com has now published the AATA staff response to the report by Ted Annis.  They don’t agree with his calculations, or presumably, his purpose.