Fuller Road Station and the Mayor’s Letter

The story first broke on AnnArbor.com the night before, but by mid-morning on July 28 many Ann Arbor citizens had received a letter from Ann Arbor’s Mayor, John Hieftje.  The letter begins,

As you may have heard, the City of Ann Arbor is considering whether to invest with the University of Michigan and the Federal Government in a multi-modal transportation facility on Fuller Road—the Fuller Road Station (FRS). I write today to give you some important background information.

The news report has attracted a number of comments.  They help to make one point clear: Fuller Road Station is not just one issue.  It is a complex of issues, with separate histories, policy implications, visions of the future, suppositions, and mass of facts and details behind each one.

It is also emerging as a strong political theme in Ann Arbor.  Thus its future, and the justification for our city embarking on this adventure, have become enmeshed with the politics of the August primary, in which three candidates (two incumbents) question the venture and three support it.  The Mayor has favored the candidates who support the FRS and the timing of his letter just before the primary election (next Tuesday, folks) seems curious.

Our mayor very rarely writes us directly, and his letter deserves careful study and scrutiny.  But first, let’s consider the different issues.  (Listed in no particular order.)

1. Ann Arbor’s finances.  What is the likely effect of embarking on the long-term project of a “multimodal” station?  Will it prove to be neutral, more or less, a plus because of economic activity and other indirect effects, or a fiscal morass?

2. Parking and traffic issues.  Much of the immediate project is for a parking structure that will largely serve the UM Health Care complex.  Is this a good thing, from the viewpoint of transportation planning, and also for the city?

3. Ann Arbor parks and ordinances regarding use of parkland.  A ballot issue forbade the sale of parkland without a public vote, but this project skirts that by a long-term lease.  Should this be permitted, and further, is this a dangerous precedent for disposing of parkland by other means than a direct sale?

4. The future of commuter rail from Ann Arbor (the station would become part of the AATA’s Transit Master Plan that presumes commuter rail will connect Ann Arbor both to Howell and to Detroit).   To the extent that this idea justifies construction of the Fuller Road Station, is it likely to happen?

5. On a related note, what about “high-speed rail”  in Michigan?  Is that going to happen and to what extent does construction of the Fuller Road Station depend on Ann Arbor being part of such a system?

6. And while we are on that question, what is the position of Amtrak in all this? The current service to Chicago is popular and there is an existing station.

7. What are our hopes and dreams of a future transportation system?  As we have already noted,  trains have a powerful emotional pull.  (See Train of Dreams and Train of Dreams II.)  Our mental picture of what the future should hold for transportation that frees us from the automobile is a powerful driver in these decisions.

8. Our relationship with the University of Michigan.  We are very nearly a company town.  To what extent does “it’s good for the UM” also translate to “it’s good for Ann Arbor”?  Are there times when our interests diverge?

9. What is the appropriate public process for this decision and has it been followed?  (See What, Exactly, is a Robust Public Process. It isn’t about the FRS but addresses some of the points.)

The Mayor’s letter touches on many of these themes.  In the next post we will go through his letter point by point and attempt some analysis.

UPDATE: The post was edited to add the last point after publication.

 

Public Process and Governance in Ann Arbor

Whereby the primary for the 5th Ward Council seat is a test of theory of governance.

Ann Arbor is and has been going through a Big Changes moment.  There have been a lot of decisions that involve not only notable sums of money but the way our lives are lived in a day-to-day sense.  Part of this has been an aggressive push for development in the downtown and elsewhere.   Both the money issues and the development issues have inspired a smallish group of actively participating citizens (the cast changes depending on a specific issue) who lobby and write their council representatives, and appear at public comment times.  Sometimes contrary viewpoints expressed by citizens have succeeded in modifying Council’s actions, sometimes not.  Sometimes a minority of council members have succeeded in recruiting just enough support to alter the course of a project or issue.  Sometimes the Council has voted in near unanimity for a particular measure regardless of the loud protests coming from the peanut gallery.  But unexpectedly, this engagement by citizens in issues before our local government has become a campaign issue in the August primary for the council seat in the 5th Ward currently held by Mike Anglin.  (Note: I am supporting Anglin for re-election.)

Anglin’s challenger, Neal Elyakin, has been said to have the support of Mayor John Hieftje. As reported in the Ann Arbor Observer of  July 2011 (the Observer does not customarily put its stories online until the next printed issue comes out),  “Hieftje is in many ways a crucial part of the election.  He’s endorsed Rapundalo outright and come close with Ault and Elyakin.  If all three win, the council’s balance of power will shift further towards the mayor.”   And indeed, Elyakin’s positions appear to be the straight Council Party line.  He has particularly endorsed development; from the July 13 League of Women Voters debate, “I know that we can keep that homey Ann Arbor attitude and still have the big-city infrastructure that attracts world-class opportunities”.  He promises to be a champion for the Fuller Road Station (apparently dreams of trains),  a major objective for the Mayor.

Elyakin lays claim to a style that helps to foster consensus on issues.  From his website: “I bring disparate groups together toward problem solving and consensus building.”  But perhaps his true objective was made a bit more clear with his closing statement at the LWV debate (reported both by the Ann Arbor Chronicle and by AnnArbor.com):

“A few naysayers – while I applaud every person’s right to speak up and speak out – should not hold the city hostage, whether they are in the audience or sitting on council.”  (Italics added.)

Elyakin apparently feels things haven’t been going well in the development department. On his campaign website, he says,  “My neighbors speak about city development, and raise concerns that the city must have a better decision making process regarding reasonable development”. But what does he mean by that?  When has the city been “held hostage” by a few naysayers?

I can think of a couple of examples of when the public became very vocal on a development issue.  One example is the two PUD projects proposed for the Germantown neighborhood.  The Heritage Row project (the Chronicle had a recent update) has had nearly a cat’s allowance of lifetimes but is currently in limbo.  The Moravian, a hotly debated (citizens appearing on both sides of the issue) PUD for nearby, was defeated April 5, 2010; the account by the Chronicle explains that though the project attracted 6 votes, it required 8 to pass (an aspect of special rules governing PUDs, or planned unit developments).  In both cases, a majority of council members voted for projects but a minority was able to defeat them because of the city’s ordinances and regulations, which they followed.

The “robust public process” that is now being called for emerged where there was a confluence of big public expenditure and development on the Library Lot Conference Center issue. In that case, a group of citizens kept a consistent watch on the fine points of the question, through RFP advisory committee meetings and as consultant’s reports and independent studies (carefully sliced and diced by the watchful citizens) surfaced.  The group, Citizens Against the Conference Center, formed in the latter days when it appeared that Council was really going to pass the thing through (the scheduled date was April 19, 2011).  In about three weeks, the group raised $3000, produced yard signs that were distributed all over Ann Arbor (a number were still undistributed when the issue closed down early), and rained a steady downpour of emails upon Council. On April 4, 2011, a resolution sponsored by several council members, including some who had supported the project, closed off the subject.

Is this a model for how citizens should interface with their local government?  Not really.  It was a substitute for orderly discussion and public interaction with decision-makers throughout that long process.  To their credit, council members tried to make it a better process at times, CM Sandi Smith introducing an RFP where it appeared the project was just going to be built through administrative fiat, CM Rapundalo making an effort to open up the RFP Advisory Committee process and promising a public hearing.  I’ll always be grateful to Mayor Hieftje for seeing the writing on the wall (or the yard signs) and cutting the thing off cleanly.  But was it a case of the city being held hostage by a small minority?  Hardly.  (For a couple of weeks after the decision, checks to pay for the campaign were still coming in and being returned;  people were flocking to the campaign website and asking for signs.  As much a mass movement as we’ve seen for a while.)  Yet somewhat inadvertently, Elyakin’s campaign has seemed to indicate that he thinks that was an example of a process gone wrong (comment by Gustav Cappaert on the Chronicle: “Why does suggesting that someone build something where the library lot provoke so much ire?”).

Much of what is at issue here boils down to this:  What is our concept of governance? And what place does dissent hold?

Governance is a tough issue.  We now live in a state where a state official can dissolve a local government.  We are seeing a total failure of governance in the US Congress.  In many ways we are very fortunate because we have a council that does, on some level, care what its constituents say.  But there has been a disturbing direction over the last few years of defining the ideal governance model in Ann Arbor as being…let’s all go along with the direction coming from the top.  No dissent, please.

As we reviewed in a post over a year ago, in general we are searching for a thing called “consensus”.  But consensus does not mean that everyone agrees.  It means that people in general will go along with a decision they dislike.  If a decision makes a noticeable fraction of people really, really upset (as would have been the case in the Library Lot Conference Center), things fall apart.

We’ve been told from time to time that we have a thing called “representative government”. Here is a quote from that earlier post:

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.

Well, that’s one concept of public process.  But the “representative” is also supposed to listen to constituents and at least factor that into his thinking.  Having been on that side of the desk, I know there are times that a representative has to make an unpopular decision and then risk the judgment of the voters.  I don’t actually believe in government by referendum.  We’d have never passed the Civil Rights Act if it had been presented for a public vote.  But when the issue is not so morally weighted, we expect those we elect to listen to us.

The current discussion about a “robust public process” is exploring what the appropriate, and useful, role of the public in making decisions should be.  I’m encouraged by comments from the DDA’s meetings and council action that this is being considered seriously, and will be writing more about it later.

But meanwhile, we are coming up to a point of the only public referendum that really counts, namely elections.

Mike Anglin has sometimes been a lone dissenter, and often if not always a member of the minority on council.  But he has, in doing so, clearly been representing his constituents, to the extent that he hears from them.  Two years ago he won re-election by a 65% margin against a Council Party nominee. (See our analysis.)  Sometimes his lonely vote has been something, that in retrospect, looks pretty good.  Consider that he was the only vote against the Big Hole (the parking garage under the Library Lot). We strenuously argued against it at the time and those arguments have only been augmented by recent developments.  Whether the benefits of this project are in confirmation of its initiation or not, it seems clear now that it deserved more scrutiny.  In any event, would we have been better off if he had raised no objection at all?  Did his objection at least put the matter on the table for discussion?  I think so.  And his recent objection to the Fuller Road sewer improvements surely falls into the same category. (See the AnnArbor.com account.)

Can Anglin have been said to “hold the city hostage”?  Clearly not, since he didn’t prevail in those cases.  Now, he has been a member of that council minority who have denied the CP a supermajority (8 votes) for certain projects.  Perhaps that is what Elyakin is getting at – that he wants to eliminate those minority votes and thus promote what he terms “reasonable development”.  His endorsement by one of the most pro-development members on Council, Sandi Smith, would seem to support that.

It should be emphasized that Anglin’s votes have been (WAG) 95% with the rest of council— and with the Mayor.  Some of his votes (both for and against) have been in a direction I didn’t like personally.  But I think Elyakin’s criticism of him as a “naysayer” indicates a greater divide – the question of whether dissent and discussion have a place in governance in Ann Arbor.  I think they do.

UPDATE: Anglin won and so did Kunselman, both by about 2-1 margins.  (Kunselman’s numbers were slightly confused by a third candidate in the race.)  The third incumbent in the race, Stephen Rapundalo (a founding member of the Council Party),  suffered some incursions by a novice politician with little funding, Tim Hull.  Here are news accounts, from the Ann Arbor Chronicle and AnnArbor.com.

Results summarized (write-in votes omitted):

The August Democratic primary election has become, like it or not, the only referendum on our local government that we have.  This was a clear result of Council Party 1: Dissidents 2.  It is notable that the Fuller Road Station became one of the main subjects discussed during the campaign.  I would claim that this result shows a lack of enthusiasm for that project.

What, Exactly, is a Robust Public Process?

Certain words have their moments in the sun, where they seem to be on every tongue and carry strong meaning that is generally recognized.  Later they become trite or worse and fall into disuse. A particularly good word right now is “robust”.  The dictionary meaning of this word is “strong, healthy, vigorous”.  It is used in particular fields, such as referring to a robust statistical test or a computer system that is resistant to failure.

The word made a marked entry into Ann Arbor politics with the passage of two resolutions on April 4, 2011.  As we reviewed in our previous post, this was the night that the Library Lot Conference Center was laid to rest.   The first resolution, that killed the Valiant proposal and terminated the RFP, contained this phrase:

RESOLVED, That future planning and proposals for this site shall include a robust public process.

The second resolution, which assigned responsibility to the DDA for RFP development of the four city-owned lots, laid out four phases in the process.  In Phase II, the DDA is enjoined to

Solicit robust public input and conduct public meetings to determine residents’ Parcel-level downtown vision.

For Phase III, the DDA should

Solicit robust public input and confirm the extent of community consensus for the Parcel-by-Parcel Plan through public meetings and surveys.

These admonitions were welcome to many of us who support public participation in important civic decisions.  But what does it mean, exactly?

CM Sandi Smith objected to the inclusion of the word “robust” in the first resolution.  When we commented on that in an earlier post, she commented in return that “I do not at all object to the public process which is not only important but mandatory. My objection was to the subjective nature of the word ‘robust’.”

CM Smith has a point.  On hearing the word, many of us think we know what it means.  But on examination, what satisfies this requirement?  A single public meeting on a subject?  Opportunity for public comment? Computerized surveys?  Focus groups? Working exercises? And to what extent and how should public sentiment be incorporated into a final conclusion?  Is overwhelming opposition a veto? Perhaps we need a consensus on this question before we will be able to answer the more substantive ones.

The Library Lot, the DDA, and the Ann Arbor RFP Process II

The history of plans to develop Ann Arbor’s Library Lot goes back literally decades (see the 1991 Luckenbach study).  But most recently, as documented in our long blog series listed on the Library Lot Conference Center page, the effort to develop the lot hinged around RFP 743.  The first post of this series described the making of the RFP (released on August 14, 2009).  At the end, it all came apart, as mostly described in the last post of the blog series on the conference center.  On April 4, 2011, the Ann Arbor City Council passed a resolution that terminated the RFP and the sole remaining proposal from Valiant Partners was conclusively rejected.

But at the same meeting, Council established a new process for the downtown surface lots.  In a not-so-tacit recognition that the city-directed RFP process had undergone a fairly spectacular failure, the Council asked the DDA to take it on.  But the area assigned to the DDA was not the entire city, but rather the city-owned lots in the area south of Liberty.

City-owned parcels assigned to DDA for RFP process - click for larger image

The DDA’s Partnership Committee cheerfully took this on (even before the final resolution was passed) and began scheduling regular discussions at their monthly meetings, featuring different city officials and others, reviewing different aspects of planning.  (See our post, Ann Arbor’s Suburban Brain Problem, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle’s excellent summary of the June 2011 meeting.)

As the Chronicle details, the June meeting appeared to set the Partnership Committee up for a vigorous, proactive approach to a broad downtown planning exercise.  Doug Kelbaugh (a UM professor familiar to many long-timers as instrumental in putting together the Calthorpe process) and his colleague Kit McCullough submitted a brief proposal involving some brief but substantial public participation.  Peter Allen did one of his typically scintillating presentations (Allen sometimes seems to be several places at once when speaking to his elaborate schemes), based in part on his talks with many community leaders.  He emphasized the many community connections that he would draw upon and stated that he would like to see a 20-story building, to be the definitive Ann Arbor skyline object, on the Library Lot.  It seemed that Allen and Kelbaugh were competing to some extent for the job of the “consultant”.  Meanwhile, at the June meeting there was also some substantive discussion by Albert Berriz and others at the table (described by the Chronicle).  Susan Pollay stated that the July committee meeting would be an intense retreat-style meeting at which the group would make real decisions about setting the course for the process.

Today’s Partnership Committee played to a full house.  Not only were there many citizens in the audience, but McCullough’s UM class, Josie Parker of the AADL, Peter Allen, Kelbaugh and McCullough, and someone making a video tape.

The result was anticlimax.  The expectant audience waited for several minutes before a diminished committee took their seats.  The meeting was chaired by John Mouat  in the absence of both the co-chairs (Russ Collins and Sandi Smith).  No experts were called to speak and Allen, Kelbaugh and McCullough were never mentioned.   Committee members spoke in generalities and the entire meeting seemed conducted under water, so slow and vague each step was.  Mouat spoke admiringly of a couple of other recent plans (the Urban Forest plan and the AATA’s Transit Master Plan) as examples – and meditated aloud on how a community can reach consensus. He expressed a dislike of the very word “development” and said that he didn’t want the development community to be too closely linked to the process.

Some reference was made to RFP 743 (the sad example that put the current process in place).  Susan Pollay astonishingly characterized it as “an abbreviated council RFP process that never got very far”.  She also made a point that the city needs to indicate to developers what incentives will be available.  The Valiant Partners, she said, came in with lots of ideas of what the city could do for them “only to have the community recoil”.  Ably put, that.  Joan Lowenstein also brought out a very cogent point, which is that the city has tried to achieve every possible goal in past RFPs and that this is not realistic.

But in general, there was no instrumental discussion at all.  The group seemed literally to be trying to last out the clock.  They did succeed in instructing staff (Pollay and Amber Miller) to put together a timeline for a process of about a year.  The subject will also be added on to a working session that the DDA has already scheduled with Council for October (principally about parking).

What happened?  Clearly something has interrupted the headlong progress toward a comprehensive downtown planning process.  Audience members gathered in small groups afterwards to ask each other the meaning of it all.  We didn’t have answers.

UPDATE:  See the Chronicle’s more complete coverage of this meeting.