Full Steam Ahead on the Conference Center

A report on the February 23, 2010 Library Lot RFP Advisory Committee meeting.  (No new meeting scheduled at present.) Also speculation on what it means and where we go from here.

At the latest Library Lot RFP advisory committee meeting (February 23), it became more and more evident that city officials are going to take every possible step to bring a conference center proposal before the council.  As we have frequently noted, there has been a “secret plan” to put a conference center on the Library Lot for years.  But somehow it will be necessary to make this decision respectable, or at least not politically damaging.

With the exit of Jayne Miller,  the management of the committee has been transferred directly to the city administrator’s office.  One consequence appears to be a loss of the relative transparency that the committee was displaying.  This is indicated by the fact that most of what was discussed at the February 23 meeting – two letters from proposers – was not placed on the website, despite requests to make them public.  (Correspondence, including questions and responses, was posted earlier.)  We were able to post a letter from Valiant Partners by obtaining a hard copy of the letter, but the letter from Acquest to the committee was evidently more closely held.  These two letters were the major subject of discussion at the February 23 meeting.

Discussion of the letters

The letter from Acquest, judging from the very discreet discussion of it (the committee seems to be perfecting a special language of code words and half sentences), dealt with the awkward question of Acquest’s expectation that the city, and possibly the county, would build a conference center on the old Y lot.  Apparently Acquest is backing off an outright demand that this would happen as a prerequisite of their proposal.  CM Teall commented that she was concerned that they might not succeed without it.  (As outlined in the Valiant letter,  the Ann Arbor hotel market is already saturated and the only hope for a new one would be that a conference center would pull in new business.)  CM Rapundalo (the chair of the RFP committee) concluded that “we have to stick with the parameters …(the context of the Library Lot)… they added (another) component but as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with what we’ve asked for”.  Sam Offen asked who is paying for the independent studies that Acquest is asking for.  John Splitt said that they (Acquest) were suggesting that someone else should pay for them.  (Note that Valiant said in their letter that they had already hired a consultant to do a study.)  CM Rapundalo said that they would need to “clarify” this  – whether it is a requirement going forward (having independent studies) and who would pay for it.

With regard to the Valiant letter, Rapundalo mentioned the offer to reduce the size of the conference center to 25,000 S.F. (to reduce costs).  He noted that he had heard from authoritative sources that the “tipping point” for conference centers was 40,000 S.F and indicated that he was concerned about the possible success with the reduced capacity.  Teall suddenly asked if the hotel couldn’t seek guaranteed advance bookings (presumably to show that it would be viable) but was told by several committee members and staff that this was not practicable.  Roger Fraser, who was present as senior staff to the committee, commented that he had been involved with the Denver convention center and that they didn’t start booking till the project was approved.

With regard to the Valiant letter, Eric Mahler began to ask questions about the implications of the suggestions Valiant had made in their letter for “TIF bonds”, saying that these are hard to justify in this climate.  (Ed. note: it is not clear what Valiant meant by TIF bonds, unless it would be bonds issued by private parties, to be repaid by TIF proceeds.)  Mahler continued to say that TIF would be more risky, but “a lot of people are not crazy about (issuing) city bonds”.

Fraser quickly closed down this line of discussion.  Speaking so softly that he could barely be heard by observers sitting directly behind him,  he said that this (bond discussion) would be a “negotiating point”.  “(We) don’t want to be putting up barriers before we get down the road.”  Offen brought up the point that Valiant had offered to remove the subordination of the city’s interest to a private lender.  Fraser said brusquely, “That’s detail.”  Rapundalo summed up by saying, “it’s good they are willing to talk about that”.  Fraser continued to say that the committee should concentrate on “fundamentals”.

Teall, brightly changing the subject, asked if it weren’t true that the top two floors were residential.  (The implication was that the city would also be adding to the housing stock, always a desirable outcome.)  But several committee members, including Offen and Splitt and backed up by Pollay, said that the likely use of those condominiums would be as rentals made available to the hotel for use by certain guests.  Splitt said this was another way of financing the hotel construction.

The committee moved on to review some questions they had evidently sent to the two conference center proposers.  (Neither these questions nor the answers have appeared on the city website.)  After a discussion so elliptical that it is impossible to summarize, there was a certain amount of complacency expressed by Splitt that two proposals had been presented in response to the RFP that had potential.  Fraser concluded that he was looking forward to the opportunity to ferret out the strengths of the two, and concluded that they were “not out of the park”.  (Ed. note: apparently he meant “out of the ballpark”, since the committee has definitely taken the discussion away from any park concept.)  Teall chimed in that she agreed.

The consultant to be hired by the city

The city previously put out an RFP for a consultant (to be paid for by the DDA) to help them review the proposers’ business viability and the likely success of the project.   The original timeline for this person or firm to begin work has slipped considerably.   While the RFP called for the consultant to attend the January interviews, no one has yet been hired.  Fraser said that they had more or less settled on one candidate (but was not ready to reveal a name) and would try to hire him/them “within the next 10 days”.  He said that this person was based personally in Ann Arbor but did not work here.  They are doing, Fraser said, a “mating dance” in which a work plan has been requested.  He assumed that the advisory committee would eventually meet with the consultant and work from a set of questions that would form the basis of “the report you want”.  Some discussion of the timeline put time for a report at a month from the committee meeting or perhaps sooner.  Offen said that it should address whether there is a market for a hotel.  Fraser agreed that it “needs to convince us that this will be successful”.

Other consultation for the committee

With a report from the consultant some weeks off, the committee began to list other possible sources of information – or really, encouragement.   Some of the suggested guests or information sources were the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau (CVB), SPARK, and Josie Parker, the executive director of the Ann Arbor District Library.  (The UM was also suggested and firmly dismissed.)  It seemed that the committee was looking for affirmation and encouragement as much as information.  Susan Pollay cautioned that the CVB board was composed mostly of hoteliers, who might not support new competition.    Pollay has worked closely with Parker (who, as we have commented before, has been supportive of a conference center on the Library Lot), and suggested that perhaps the committee could get a sense of how the conference center would benefit the AADL in its growth.  Rapundalo hoped that perhaps SPARK (or their CEO, Michael Finney) could explain how a conference center would support economic development.  Fraser agreed that when talking about attractiing business into the downtown, “we need decent places for them to stay proximate to the business location – what we’ve heard is that it is (currently) inadequate”.

Where we go from here

All in all, it sounded very much as though the committee was seeking support and an “echo chamber effect” – people who will tell them that the course they are set on is the right one, and perhaps loan their own authority in making this point.  The description of the negotiations over the consultant’s “work plan” is also suggestive.  Presumably much of the consultant’s own work and calculations will be confidential and not subject to FOIA.  I predict that the report will be favorable to the Valiant proposal and will seek to show that it makes business sense for the city, or that it will at least not recommend against the Valiant plan, but merely set out some pluses and minuses.

Of course, all of this dodging about gives the lie to a central argument about the RFP committee, that it was supposedly appointed to do a full and fair review of all proposals, and to follow a formal process for evaluating them.  The RFP even laid out percentages by which each facet of a proposal was supposed to be weighed.  When CM Sabra Briere presented a resolution back in January (see coverage by the Ann Arbor Chronicle) merely to have all documentation forwarded to council, CM Rapundalo and others shouted “Process!”  over and over again, arguing that the committee should be permitted to do its sober evaluation of all proposals and then present a recommendation to council.  The committee had already dismissed the two open space proposals with two or three minutes’ deliberation (but subsequently picked them up again at the mayor’s urging).  The argument was that due process required respect for the committee deliberations.  But the committee’s January 21 meeting (again, summarized by the Chronicle) did not use a scoring process at all.  Instead,  after a perfunctory discussion, they dismissed the two  open space proposals (one of which offered to write the city a check for $2.5 million) because they weren’t “clear enough” or “didn’t answer the questions well enough”, and also because they might cost money to the city.  As we reported, they also expressed considerable antipathy to the very notion of open space.  Without any more sophisticated device than a simple ranking of preferences, the committee settled on the two conference center proposals, disregarding cautions about risk and contingencies from two staff members.  While they were troubled by ambiguity and potential cost to the city by the open space plans, they are now embracing them with regard to the two conference center plans.  But will they be able to put lipstick on at least one of those two piggy faces well enough to convince the council and public that this is the correct choice?

An inconvenient truth

Most inconveniently, this decision has arrived on our doorstep at a time of virtual fiscal meltdown for the City of Ann Arbor.  The decaying Stadium Bridge, the layoff of police officers, the threat of new income taxes or their alternative, are all current news headlines. Council is weekly canceling popular programs like the Mack School pool, the Senior Center, Project Grow, or the summer band concerts, and human services are in jeopardy.  It seems reasonable to say that the political popularity of spending scarce city tax dollars  on subsidizing yet another expensive project will be nil.  Indeed, a number of city council members and the mayor were quoted recently as saying that they would not support a subsidy for that purpose.  And the RFP was promoted as bringing financial benefit to the city.

Yet it is also true that both of these proposals would mean that the city would assume considerable responsibility for financing a new conference center.  Acquest’s proposal simply called for the city to build a conference center on the old Y lot (but didn’t explain how that would be financed), while Valiant was very forthright in saying that the city would be expected to sell bonds (full-faith-and-credit bonds, where the city’s assets and revenue flow are on the line) to finance it.

Ann Arbor's bond debt in millions of dollars

This comes at a moment when the city’s debt is already skyrocketing. Here are some figures extracted from the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report), which is available on the city’s web page for FY 2002 to FY 2009.  (The second and third pages of the attachment are actual pages from FY 2005 and FY 2009 CAFR).  As the attachment shows, bond indebtedness increased fourfold between FY 2005 and FY 2009.  Add in the bonds issued ($49, 420,000) to pay for the Library Lot parking structure, and the increase is six-fold.  (The figure on the graph for 2010 only shows the parking structure bonds; the fiscal year doesn’t end until June.)

This calculation and figure are, of course, oversimplified.  The amounts shown are only for “governmental activities”, not for “business-type activities” (enterprise funds like the water utilities).  Keep in mind that the fiscal year begins in July of the previous year, so FY 2009 ended on June 30, 2009.  Some other events that influenced this trajectory were the sale of bonds for $26 million in FY 2007 (the maintenance facility) and nearly $28 million in FY 2009 (for the city hall).  Also, in 2007 and 2008 the city “defeased”  some bonds by putting part of the general fund into a trust to pay them off.  This took them off the city debt balance.  But regardless of the details, it is clear that the city has taken a major leap into debt over a period of time that the region’s economy was in decline.

So how to sell more indebtedness for a conference center in the face of all this bad news?  It may be partly a way it is framed.  The consultant will doubtless help with this.  Somehow the final package must be presented so that it appears the debt is already paid for through other means (the arguments for bonding the parking structure were an artful example of this).  But accounting devices should not be allowed to hide the liability that this increased debt load is creating for our city. Surely after what we have been through as a country, a state, and a city over the last two years, that should be evident.

Ann Arbor GDP 2005-2008

UPDATE In contemplating Ann Arbor’s increasing debt load, it might be well to look also at the snapshot of the local economy provided by the Center for Michigan.  The graph shows the decline in local GDP over the period 2005-2008.

SECOND UPDATE: The committee’s objective stance in reviewing the proposals is further called into question when its chairman is soliciting support for a particular outcome.  At the February Main Street Area Association meeting, Stephen Rapundalo openly called for members to lobby their council representatives for one of the conference center proposals.

New Page on the Library Lot

There have been so many posts on the Library Lot RFP and conference center issues that we have now established a standing page to keep track of them.   The Library Lot Conference Center Page will serve as an index to all such posts.

Local Food III

Now that it is almost time for the second Local Food Summit (March 2, 2010; click here to register), it’s a good moment for another recap of the subject.  “Local food” isn’t just a tag, it is an entire set of philosophical concepts and world view.  It is also a powerful community builder; there is scarcely anything more fundamental than sharing food.  Individuals come to it from different directions.  Some focus on the healthfulness of fresh food, grown where you “know your farmer”  (thanks, Shannon Brines, though I don’t think you originated the phrase).  Some have invested personally in the concept of sustainability, as exemplified by the new permaculture blog hosted by AnnArbor.com.  Me, I’m a worrier and though those other things are important to me, I’m thinking about long-term community food security.  Yet I also rejoice in the beauty of freshly grown vegetables and fruit and of the home-prepared dishes made from them, as wonderfully expressed by The Farmer’s Marketer blog.  (The latest series on that blog is a very useful review of the consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) opportunities in the Ann Arbor area, required reading for anyone who is trying to source more food locally.  It starts with this overview.)

Kolibri kohlrabi, from the author's garden. Good storage vegetable.

While buying food at farmers’ markets (or through CSA membership)  is a great way to be introduced to local food (and important in supporting local agriculture), growing one’s own food is a fundamental means for food security. I’m fortunate in being able to grow food in my own backyard (I’ve even committed a gardening blog, Voltaire’s Garden).  But not everyone has the ground, the sun, or the knowledge to grow their own food without assistance. The community gardening movement is essential to making this possible for people at all economic levels.  Ann Arbor’s Project Grow and Growing Hope, based in Ypsilanti, are important resources for this. As I’ve discussed at length earlier, Project Grow is a vital community food security resource for Ann Arbor. Reprehensibly and to their enduring shame, CM Hohnke, CM Greden, CM Derezinski, and Mayor Hieftje  voted against restoring a mere $7,000 to this year’s budget that would have helped Project Grow thrive in the future.  (Two CM were absent and 6 votes were needed to restore funding.  Thanks to CM Higgins, CM Briere, CM Teall, CM Taylor and CM Smith for voting to restore.) Project Grow has gone through some organizational changes.  The long-time director, Melissa Kesterson, resigned and new board members and new bylaws are in the offing.  A recent email from PG indicates that they are cutting the number of paid staff and increasing volunteer participation.  I hope and trust that they will be successful in maintaining community gardening in Ann Arbor despite cutbacks in grants from Washtenaw County and others as well as the city.  (They have a special fundraiser at Seva [314 E. Liberty] on Monday, March 29, from 5:00-9:00 p.m.; 20% of the cost of all meals purchased that night will go to Project Grow.)

Growing Hope is an Ypsilanti-based organization that is all about community food security.  They have a multi-pronged approach that includes promoting community and neighborhood gardens, training gardeners, starting plants for use in community gardens, and full-force support of the Ypsilanti Farmers’ Market (to which lower-income people can get coupons for purchase of fresh locally grown food).

Help in learning to garden and produce food is available elsewhere, too.  The UM Matthei Botanical Garden and Arboretum launched a major initiative last year and continuing it this year, called The Local Table.  They have an exciting class schedule that includes such things as growing mushrooms, keeping chickens and an ongoing support group for beekeepers.  (I’m really, really sorry that I missed the shitake mushroom day.)

Transition Ann Arbor has also taught food production skills at their “Reskilling Workshops”.

Food Gatherers, which is all about food security, started a growing program last year. They have a number of community partners who are growing food to supplement their own diets or the food distribution programs that the organization runs.  Food Gatherers also happily accepts the produce from home gardens.

Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP) is a five-county consortium that is focused more on the small local producers and building a food system of producers, distribution, and consumers in Southeast Michigan.  Their annual conference this year is June 24 in Jackson.  Their website also has links to other exciting programs like Ann Arbor Township’s Small Farms Initiative.

Like so many gardeners and would-be gardeners, I’m starting to get out the seed packets and thinking about my planting schedule.  I hope that this spring can bring ever more local food production and a growing (pun intended) energy around this important issue.

UPDATE: I recently learned that Edible Avalon is showing a new spurt of energy.  According to the coordinator, Kris Kaul,  it is being conducted this year in conjunction with Food Gatherers, under a grant (I haven’t been able yet to find out from where).  The idea is to help tenants at Avalon Housing grow their own vegetables.

SECOND UPDATE: Here is a story on Ann Arbor Chronicle about the recent food summit.

THIRD UPDATE: There will be a fundraiser for Edible Avalon at Zingerman’s Roadhouse on April 11.  Here’s what the Zingermans’ newsletter says about it:

Join bestselling author and food visionary, Michael Pollan, at Zingerman’s Roadhouse for an intimate conversation about the revolution in food and farming underway in the United States. He will present a unique personal view of the forces behind the current headlines dealing with food and health. Part of the evening’s conversation will be based on questions from the audience. Proceeds from this fundraiser will support Ann Arbor’s Homegrown Festival and the Edible Avalon Project: a community garden program supporting low income residents in Washtenaw County in growing their own organic food. The event will also support the work of the Center for Economic Security in making “Growing Health,” a film illuminating the connections between healthy living soil and reduction in chronic disease.

Chef Alex Young will prepare a delicious selection of appetizers for the reception, using ingredients from his own Cornman Farms.

$500 – includes private reception with Michael Pollan, conversation & book-signing,
Package of Chris Bedford’s DVDs, and Pollan’s 3 books.  (This is at 5:30.)

$150 – includes the conversation and book-signing (Starts at 6:00)

The newsletter doesn’t give a phone number to call for information; I’d try the Roadhouse.

FOURTH UPDATE: Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP) has some great training events going on this fall for people considering getting into growing for the market.  See here.

FIFTH UPDATE: The Spring 2010 Community Observer has a good article (not available online yet, see arborweb in a few weeks): Growing Closer by Michael Betzold.  It is about the efforts to have more small local growers produce food.

SIXTH UPDATE: Hoop, hoop, hooray! A great story about St. Joe’s using its resources to grow food for patients and the community is in the Chronicle (April 14, 2010).

A Valiant Effort for a Conference Center

All about a new letter from Valiant Partners LLC  and what it means about the conference center

At the January 21 meeting of the Advisory Committee (RFP for the Library Lot), the committee chose to continue with both proposals for conference centers.  As reported by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, there were some serious reservations voiced by the city’s deputy treasurer, Mike Pettigrew, and assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald. Both expressed concern about the contingency built in by Acquest that the city would have to build a conference center so that they would build the hotel, and about the risk that the city would assume in the Valiant proposal.   Valiant called upon the city to subordinate payments toward the city bond (a full-faith and credit bond issued by the city and payable by the taxpayers) to a first mortgage private lender.  In other words, if there was not sufficient money made by the project, the bank would be paid before the city.

Evidently the committee must have sent some questions or comments to the two developers, though that is not shown on the city RFP website.  Valiant Partners recently sent a letter to the committee.

The letter seeks to reassure the committee that Valiant is ready to collaborate.  Much of the letter is an unadorned sales pitch. “This is a unique economic time and the Library Lot is a unique location, which can serve to stimulate economic development in our community…A Hotel and Conference Center on this location is a perfect fit.”  But the real meat of the 2 1/2 page letter is in some adjustments they are making or willing to make:

• They will hire a hospitality firm, HVS Consulting, to do a “demand study,” to be completed in three weeks (the letter is dated January 28).
• They are flexible on the design.  They offer to consider reducing the conference center from 32,000 SF to 25,000 SF.
• They recognize the concern about risk to the city and actually offer to make the city’s claim on proceeds equal to or before a mortgage lien holder.  (Note that this might affect their ability to get financing.)  They have other thoughts about this, including TIF bonds  (those would not be issued by the city as with their current proposal).

Notably, they concede in the letter that hotel occupancy in the area is already low.  According to a local expert in these matters, Chuck Skelton,  Ann Arbor hotel occupancy is in the low 60% range and ADR  (average daily rate) is around $99.  He also says that full-service hotels need to have occupancy in the 60-65% range in order to break even. (See interview with Sabra Briere.)  The Valiant partners say, “We particularly want to stress that the existing hotel market for Ann Arbor is limited, and that the only way a new hotel can be supported is through the new demand to be created by the Conference Center”.  In other words, without new traffic to a conference center, the hotel would only take business from hotels already in the area.

There have been many studies and reports in recent years that conference centers are often losing propositions for cities, and are not guaranteed draws.  Looking at one list of criteria, Ann Arbor doesn’t seem to be very well-placed.  In “If you build it, will they come?” the author asks,

• Is it a retreat, to get away from where they normally are?
• Is it to get together in a convenient place, centrally located?
• Is there any unique draw to your community?
• What are their alternatives (i.e., who are your competitors)?
• Why would they come to you instead of them (the competition)?

One would have to point out that, as nice as Ann Arbor is,  it is not really a destination as some cities are. The weather is bad a number of months of the year, it is not centrally located and getting here from Detroit Metro is not particularly convenient.  As to a unique draw, though we have the UM, it does not offer tourist-type activities.  So for Ann Arbor to compete for new business (as apart from conferences that were already going to be here because of the UM) seems questionable.  Ann Arbor or Chicago? or Denver? or San Diego?   Think about it.

Valiant also returns to the argument that a conference center is much desired by the community.  “The need for a downtown conference center has been in discussion for more than 40 years, and now is the perfect time to plan for the building of Ann Arbor’s first Conference Center.  That demand is seemingly clear to all in the business and University community…  Our program and pro formas so far have been based on the evaluations and desires of local institutions, such as AACVB, the University of Michigan, and SPARK, as well as many members of the community.”

But according to Mary Kerr, President of the Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the CVB board has not taken a position on a conference center, and Jim Kosteva, the community relations liaison for the University of Michigan, has repeatedly stated that the UM takes no position on a conference center built in the city.  A search of the SPARK website does not reveal a position on a conference center.  Oddly, Valiant does not reference the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce although we know that former Chamber president Jesse Bernstein was very influential in behind the scene talks with Valiant.

In any event, is the key point that some people might sort of like to have a new conference center?  Or is the point to make a good business decision that will not cause more grief  (debt for the city, competition for existing local businesses) than benefit (unproven assertions of economic development benefits)?

The Advisory Committee meets again on February 16.  It’ll be interesting to see how they address the information in this letter.

UPDATE: Today (February 16) a group of citizens and one reporter (Dave Askins from the Chronicle) were met by a city staffer at the conference room where the Advisory Committee meeting was supposed to be held.  We were told that the meeting had been canceled at the behest of the chair, Stephen Rapundalo.  No explanation – no new date.

SECOND UPDATE: Hotel business in Michigan continues to show signs of stress.  See the recent article in the Free Press about first-line hotels like the Hyatt Regency Dearborn (a conference hotel) going into default on their debt.

Local in Ann Arbor Politics

When I began this blog (the first post is dated April 14, 2009), it was not with the explicit aim of writing about politics in the narrow sense.  It was intended as a celebration and an examination of our local community.  But as I said, “It is also about how our town will face the challenges in our future.”   Unfortunately, local politics is at the heart of that commitment.  Unavoidably, coverage of local races and the workings of local government has crept in.  (I have stayed pretty much with City Council and have not so far attempted to cover other local governments like Washtenaw County or the Ann Arbor Public Schools.)  Since our community has been careening from crisis to crisis, it seems that for the last few months the conduct of council has become the major theme. I hope that this can abate so that other topics can be considered.

There are some pitfalls to maintaining a political blog.  One is that readers may question the blogger’s motivation.  So much political discourse these days is “spun” and selective that we have grown accustomed to discounting much of what is written as simply manipulative.  Of course, I have my point of view and very definitely a vision of where we should be going, and I feel privileged to be able to express it.  But I also wish to adhere to some journalistic standards in my writing.  So I’ve come to a point where I want to lay down some open guidelines for how I will be covering politics.

I will admit to being something of a political junkie.  As I have written earlier,  I became involved in local Democratic politics within the first month of arriving in Ann Arbor.  I have served on a number of important committees and on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners (1997-2004).  When I left the BOC I had every intention of getting out of politics altogether, but the dire state of my beloved adopted hometown drew me back in.  It is just impossible to be concerned about a community without addressing the decision-making process in government.  There are too many consequences to what is done in City Hall.  I ran for council in 2008 and came within a hairsbreadth of winning.  I’ll admit that I have often entertained the thought of a rematch over the last year.  But I came to the conclusion some weeks ago that becoming a candidate again would conflict with my true objective, that of fostering a successful local community in Ann Arbor.  On January 11 I sent out a press release announcing that I would not run for office this year.  This non-news was not picked up by the general media.  As the press release says,

“I ran for Council in 2008 because I was very concerned about a number of directions that the Mayor and Council majority were taking the city.  I remain concerned about those issues, but believe that I will be more effective as a citizen advocate rather than as a candidate.”

Especially because another political blogger has recently announced her candidacy, I am repeating the announcement here.  I will not be a candidate for any office in 2010.

I may support candidates in local races.  But I don’t intend to use this blog as a platform for those campaigns.  I will not endorse candidates through this blog.  If I do write about a specific race, I will attempt to be reasonably even-handed.  I will not engage in personal attacks (though I may certainly comment on persons) and I will delete or edit comments that are personal attacks.

All that said, you are likely to hear a good deal more from me about our city council and its decisions.  I will also continue commenting on the mechanisms of governance.  But I hope that those observations can be taken at face value, and not merely as “political”.

UPDATE: Talk about blogging as an entry to politics, I thought this story on AnnArbor.com about the former A2Politico’s campaign for mayor was extraordinary.  (That’s Pat Lesko, who is now maintaining her blog with open support for her campaign.)  I can’t imagine this story making it to the old Ann Arbor News.  Red meat, anyone?

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.

UPDATE: With regard to the city hall decision, an article on AnnArbor.com discusses progress on the building and its budgetary impacts. Dismayingly, the operating costs for the new building will be $275,000 more once it is fully occupied.  So not only have we lost financial reserves, but are going to have a higher cost of operation.   There are a couple of hints in quotations from city administrator Roger Fraser and CFO Tom Crawford that the city was somehow taken by surprise with the financial downturn.  But Michigan was already in recession and we already knew that Pfizer would be closing and the city would lose its biggest taxpayer in late 2007 and early 2008 when these decisions were being made.

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.

SECOND UPDATE: It was with high hopes that I clicked on a new blog highlighted by Ryan Stanton on Twitter.  But the anonymous blogger (self-identified as female) of “arborblahg” seems more engaged by animus against everyone not her own generation than any political sensibility.  Not very subtle or even very funny: “geritol spiked with vodka and viagra”.  An email we received at our blog email address from “Mallory Weis” inviting us to look at the new blog says her motivation is “because I need something more meaningful than ‘House’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in my life”.  I deduce that she is fascinated by medicine from these hints and because “Mallory-Weiss syndrome” is described by Wikipedia as a condition of bleeding from tears at the junction of the stomach and esophagus caused by retching and vomiting “often associated with alcoholism and eating disorders”.  Pretty.  She needs a proofreader too.  No need to look for serious examination of the issues there.  Arbor Update, I miss you even more.

UPDATE:  The use of upholstered couches on porches was outlawed by the Ann Arbor City Council on September 20, 2010.  The story on AnnArbor.com continues to receive angry comments from students.