Ann Arbor City Council Endorsements: Part I
WELCOME TO ANN ARBOR CITY POLITICS THUNDERDOME
THIS, EXCEPT MORESO!
I quit playing video games so much this summer and I have definitely not improved my life by reading a bunch of MLive stuff. To my horror, it dawned on me that I was now a Person who had Opinions about Local Politics. The memorial service for my youth is scheduled for about five years ago.
I can think of no revenge better than trying to inflict this curse on others. I'll be less lonely during the next full moon if there are some dudes in "A More Perfect Union" T-shirts at the library as we have impassioned discussions about pedestrian safety. Also it's actually a very important time to get an opinion, city-wise.
But just in case here's a super super early jump.
[After THE JUMP: abandon all hope ye who enter here]
MY GOD IT'S AN OVERVIEW OF ANN ARBOR POLITICS
[Full disclosure: Rishi Narayan, one of the owners of UGP, is on the DDA. This post doesn't discuss the DDA.
First Martin is one of the sponsors of this blog. Despite that this post will advocate for a hotel that will compete with the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown. This post has not been cleared, or even discussed, with First Martin. Sponsoring MGoBlog is fun and comes with no surprises.
As far as my personal views, I was quite libertarian and dead center left/right on that political compass thing when I took it. I am not a registered anything. This should give everyone sufficient reason to hate me.]
Ann Arbor's political scene is at once obvious and nonsensical. Despite being the sort of town in which a Republican has the same shot at winning an election as Rich Rodriguez, Ann Arbor is one of just three Michigan municipalities to have partisan elections. This means almost all of the action takes place during the August primary, which is forthcoming. The sitting councilmember in Ward 2 is an independent and will run in November; everything else is more or less decided in two weeks. (Compounding the bizarre electoral setup: this is an odd year election. Ann Arbor recently changed their setup from two year terms to four; this is the last odd-year election.)
That's the nonsensical part. The obvious part is that Ann Arbor's local government is overrun with folks who pass ordinances requiring closed captioning for public televisions without pausing to consider how often those televisions have the sound up. (Basically never.) Or reaffirming their belief in the Paris Accord, which thanks I guess? They just released drawings of a proposed 60 million dollar "urban trail" that covers all of three miles. Moving forward on this was a unanimous vote. They expected the U would be an enthusiastic participant; they are not. Meanwhile significant sections of Ann Arbor roadways are indistinguishable from Kandahar.
It's Leslie Knopes all the way down. There's a lot of virtue signaling about stuff that's either so negligible it shouldn't be talked about at all (closed captioning on muted TVs) or vastly out of the scope of local government (climate change). I imagine this is all but universal in local governance. It grinds my gears nonetheless.
Without traditional parties to fall back on, battle lines are clearest and most consistent when it comes to development. Team Developer has been on top for most of the last 15 years. They have eight seats on the council including the mayor. Team Stasis has three seats. Certain things need an 8-3 supermajority to pass, so things are balanced on a knife edge.
The approximate teams follow. Folks up for re-election are in bold.
DEVELOPER
- Christopher Taylor, Mayor
- Jason Frenzel, Ward 1
- Kirk Westphal, Ward 2
- Zachary Ackerman, Ward 3
- Julie Grand, Ward 3
- Graydon Krapohl, Ward 4
- Chip Smith, Ward 5
- Chuck Warpehoski, Ward 5
STASIS
- Sumi Kailasapathy, Ward 1
- Jane Lumm, Ward 2
- Jack Eaton, Ward 4
Three of the four races being contested in August are explicitly about development. In three-minute introductory videos hosted by CTV, opponents of Frenzel, Ackerman, and Smith all immediately call out the current council for approving tall buildings downtown, with a particular focus on the 17-story hotel-condo-retail building the council approved on the "library lot" just north of the (yep) library downtown. The fourth race, between Eaton and Jamie Magiera, is less clearly pitched in those terms. Magiera has said he would have voted against the Library Lot. On the other hand, Eaton seems to vote against development more consistently than anyone else running for council.
This is all you get to vote on in Ann Arbor right now. You get foof and development or foof and less development. Even if there were other things to vote on, increasing housing availability (of any variety) in Ann Arbor is vastly more important than all other issues combined. So I'm going to recommend you vote for development.
That means you should vote for Frenzel, Ackerman, Smith, or (less so) Magiera on August 8th.
Here are some words justifying that.
HOT BUTTON ISSUES
this, or a slightly larger park
DEVELOPMENT. Ann Arbor is a very nice place to live, as magazines and websites and home prices keep reminding us. You can't throw an award in this town without hitting another award. The inevitable result: Ann Arbor will grow up, or it will grow out. Preventing high-density housing sends Ann Arbor down the same path San Francisco took some decades ago and will result in the same astronomical prices. This process is already well underway. Average home prices jumped an astounding 11% last year.
Ann Arbor prices have always been out of whack for a Midwestern college town. Almost literally everyone I know who has come to town in the last 20 years has struggled with sticker shock, including myself. Many have relocated to Ypsi because they more or less have to. These people should be part of the future of the city but cannot afford to live in it.
This is in part because there was a near-total cessation of high-density development for 30 years. That started to change about ten years ago and in the last five things have kicked into high gear. This is a good thing. The main problem with the pace of development in Ann Arbor is it is still far short of what's needed to meet demand. Two new dorms and several student-oriented high-rises added about 4000 new beds downtown; this merely kept pace with Michigan's expanding enrollment. Every high rise that goes up immediately fills up. The home buying market is brutal. The rental market is brutal, with renewals expected a few months into year-long leases.
Denying the fact that Ann Arbor will change with weak appeals to parking, traffic, and floodplain development is pure NIMBYism and should be rejected out of hand. Keeping Ann Arbor "funky" or "unique," which seems to be the main goal cited by development opponents, is 1) impossible and 2) detrimental to everyone in the community who isn't already locked into a mortgage they intend to keep until they die.
That's me, now, but getting there was a near thing. We put in an above-asking offer with 20% down and had our offer accepted a day before two higher offers—one 50k higher—were put in. I shudder to think what would have happened if our trigger finger was insufficiently itchy. And this was four years ago. The market has only gotten more vicious since.
Opposing development is selfish, often explicitly:
We have often thought our city to be rather special, in a community-supportive, casually fun but also fairly intellectual, colorful but not in an overly contrived sort of way. See our post, What Does it Mean to be an Ann Arbor Townie. In other words, a city to serve its citizens and welcome visitors on our own terms. [bold mine]
It is elitist (see above). It is inefficient. It excludes renters and condo-buyers from "the community." It forces longer commutes and robs Ann Arbor of tax revenue it badly needs because the university is exempt. Great swathes of the community are housing insecure because of a failure to build. Almost literally every service worker in town can't live in it. Solutions other than letting people build stuff are unicorn fairy dust.
This is the single most important issue facing the city today. Build.
THE LIBRARY LOT ITSELF. The alternative to the proposed development: a park. On top of a parking structure. That was reinforced so that a big building could go on top of it. Dirt, on concrete. Roots gradually growing into said concrete. If there was any thought that that lot should be open green space downtown it flew the coop once the garage was approved ten years ago. Also the proposed development has a public green space barely smaller than the park the lot could awkwardly accommodate—one maintained by the developer, not the city.
Tree Town Down has a level-headed and comprehensive explanation of the situation:
The root of the issue for me comes down to the public space and economics. The library lot isn’t that big, it has a parking garage below it and assorted ramps, elevators and stairwells. It can support a fairly small park that’s really more of a plaza as it’s not built to accommodate large trees or heavy sod and plantings. I’ve advocated for a downtown park in the past, we could use a public commons space in Ann Arbor, but if you’re thinking of this as a central park with all the amenities we need, I’m sorry to disappoint. This is more of an urban plaza, a little larger than Liberty Plaza around the corner which is just over 10,000 square feet. As such, with the Core Proposal you get up to $15 million dollars in a one time payment and up to $3 million per year in property taxes plus a 12,000 square foot park/plaza! The alternative is no money to the city and a 16,600 square foot park/plaza! Money certainly isn’t everything but those economics are tough to ignore. Think about our school, infrastructure and affordable housing needs.
Read that whole thing. I also recommend councilmember Chuck Warpehoski's post on his vote. The only reason to oppose the library lot development is a fear of tall buildings and people living close to their jobs downtown. (Two-thirds of Ann Arbor workers commute in from outside the city.) This is a critical election because either this large, very very useful building will go in or not.
Barracuda Networks is going to hire 120-some engineers. They are coming. They could live downtown. Or they could increase traffic and home prices.
the correct building already exists
THE TRAIN STATION. OTOH, mayoral detractors are right about this one. This is the worst thing the mayor's faction is currently doing. Ann Arbor has a train station. It is a box protected from the elements, and is totally sufficient to meet rail transit needs. Nobody ever transfers, so there are no layovers. You either get on the train, or get off it and go into the city.
For some reason the mayor is trying to hammer through approval for a 50 million dollar replacement for this train station. The justification is a ludicrous study asserting that Amtrak ridership will increase almost tenfold by 2030. (It's down almost 20% in the last four years and has been basically flat for a decade.) This assumed the RTA millage would pass. It did not. It also made a brazillion other assumptions that fly in the face of the uniformly dismal history of light rail.
Hypothetically up to 80% of the money for this will come from the federal government, which means that Ann Arbor will only be paying ten million dollars for a form of transit that will be obliterated by automated driving within 15 years. If they get the money, which is questionable.
Compounding the dodginess of this situation is the council's refusal to be transparent about why they are pursuing a useless building. Councilmembers seeking re-election in this cycle broke down along "party" lines on that vote. If there was any way to signal a desire for development but not a train station I would enthusiastically recommend it. There is not.
THE URBAN TRAIL. I don't think you can vote against this? It wasn't even a part of the candidate forum. : /
AFFORDABLE HOUSING. This is distinct from Section 8 housing, which is aimed at the poor. Generally when people talk about affordable housing in Ann Arbor they're talking about workforce housing.It makes sense that people should live close to where they work, but the simple fact that convenient land in Ann Arbor costs a fortune makes addressing affordability directly all but impossible on a large scale. A recent affordable redevelopment checked in at 320k per unit, which is higher than the average home sale in town. The city is currently putting 400k annually towards affordable housing.
Ann Arbor is mostly accomplishing what minor progress they make by paying developers to include some less than market price options in new buildings. A proposed condo development near the hospital will get a couple million dollars in property tax forgiveness to build 15 units priced for folks with at most 60% of the local median income; the DDA is forking over a similar amount so that the Library Lot development will have a similar subset of affordable housing.
This is fine, I guess, but 15 units here and 15 units there isn't going to dent demand for low-cost housing in Ann Arbor. There are few ideas other than throwing a little cash at developers to create a subset of low-income earners who get a golden ticket. Chip Smith, an urban planner, is the only councilmember who's suggested something concrete and potentially workable:
“The reason that there’s such an emphasis and such a focus on people building bigger buildings with more density downtown is that’s the only place that we let them do that,” he said.
“One of the things that we have to do a much better job of is figuring out how to provide housing that’s close to jobs, have more dense housing in places where it’s appropriate," Smith added. “So one of the things that we’ve been working on, or at least that I’ve been talking with some of my colleagues about, is the idea of a transit-oriented development overlay district at South State and Eisenhower, which is a major job center. And to put a lot of housing units there, you know, removes some of the pressure on downtown.”
Picking a couple transit corridors and blanketing them with 1) dense housing and 2) even more transit is the best bet for actually affordable Ann Arbor housing.
CLIMATE CHANGE. Climate change is a fact. It is also caused by the great sweep of history; nothing a single municipality does will affect it meaningfully either way. Ann Arbor should change its property tax code to exempt solar panels until they've paid for themselves and focus on things local governments can accomplish. This may not be possible under state law unless Ann Arbor gets creative. Try to get creative, and leave solar to private individuals. Again, I don't think there's a way to vote for this without submarining development.
THE FRANKENMILLAGE. The county's planning to put an unholy Frankenstein millage on the ballot this fall. Half of it would go to mental health services the state has cut back. Half would go to county police deputies, which is thinly justified because cops have to deal with mentally ill people. Places with their own police departments would get a refund, which the city council believes they can spend however they want.
In a perfect distillation of the foof aspects of local governance, the council passed a resolution stating they'd use the money thusly:
- 20% for pedestrian safety. The city has adopted a goal of zero pedestrian fatalities by 2025. Advances in technology will do most of this for the city without anyone lifting a finger. Meanwhile it is unclear that any attempted remediation by the city will have an impact on a death rate of less than one per year. Vision Zero's purported successes in New York are stat-juking that tries to piggy-back on normal regression to the mean.
- 40% for affordable housing, about which see above.
- 40% for climate change. See above.
Whether or not this is a breach of civic obligation or not, your imperative as a voter is clear: reject this and make the county come back with a single-purpose millage, not this rotting mess of priorities stuck together to terrify the villagers.
DEER CULL. Ann Arbor is home to an increasing deer population. Deer are large rats that destroy landscaping, carry ticks, get hit by vehicles, and taste good. Cull them. At present there is little controversy about this outside of one "Deer Lives Matter" MLive commenter. In 2015 Mayor Taylor cast a solitary vote against the cull. Everyone else was in favor.
Part two will be a drill-down into the individual council races that will unsurprisingly conclude that you should vote for the four names bolded above.
This is a bad post and you should feel bad. You don't know what you are talking about. Lol at thinking high cost downtown condos drive down the cost of living in Ann Arbor. Those buildings are designed to turn a profit at like 60% occupancy because they'd rather maintain the prestige of a high cost luxury place with the right clientele than be full at a cheaper price.
Its a shame you decided to wade into politics with clearly very little understanding of urban policy or design. Though I atleast applaud your interest in local politics since that is incredbily important for people to get involved in.
Because if you are interested in trying to allow service workers to live in AA, and as a former employee of Zingermans I can attest to the idea that a wage at those places can't afford AA, the luxury market of downtown condos that is being built for new Barracuda employees isn't helping make other units available. Those people were never looking at the bottom of the market and the bottom of the market has the same number of units available and the same number of people looking at them because its two different populations. You'd have to build actually affordable units to impact that segment of the market in the near future.
Interfering with the laws of supply and demand always works out well!!!
Very incorrect. There are strong incentives (both for the developing interests and condo owners) to sell every single unit.
If you have a 200 unit building of 400k condos you aren't going to pass up 32 million just to maintain some sort of aethestic. Also, owners don't want to pay HOA fees to maintain 40% unoccupied units.
As someone who has lived in "luxury" buildings that are in the price point of these downtown buildings, they are 100% focused on filling it up as much as possible, within reason. Yes, if the cheapest unit is $4k/mo. and someone can only afford $1k, then sure they'll pass on your application. But if rent is around $2-2.5k for a 2-bedroom in a nice part of the building, there are going to be units that are cheaper and those will provide people with options that didn't have otherwise. And apartments are very happy to cut you some deals if it gets you in the door and, again, you pass a certain bar.
I am not remotely sold that catering down to the rich will trickle down benefits for everyone else, but if the difference is having more housing with a small part vs. a parking lot and a small park, I'd take the prior.
Small deals around luxry apartments isn't helpful. If you are a service worker a place being willing to accept 2.5k a month instead of 3k isn't helpful when you can afford $700 a month. I'm not arguing against the development, AA is growing and needs more housing, its just not impacting the bottom of the market and increasing the affordability of AA for the people being pushed to Ypsi.
1)Condos have absorption not vacancy. Don't confuse the way apartments generate cash flows with condos.
2)No one is turning profits on a building 40% unsold with all of the construction costs built in and your debt service kicked from interest only to amortization once perm financing kicks in at completion. These deals don't work long-term if they are 40% vacant. You can research current cap rates and estimate some back of the napkin NOIs and ROIs if you want to verify that. The margins are not that high.
1. Annex Pittsfield Twp.
2. Level it.
3. Build about a million hobbit houses.
4. Build a huge slide with an elevator, & point it downtown.
Leave Pittsfield alone!
Political opinions are like bellybuttons. We all have them and there are few which I wish to be exposed to more than once. That being said I think it's great to get some of the local flavor of the election since a lot of us may not be living in A2 or nearby environs. If Brian wants to give us his view of things on the main page once in a while it's cool (other wise I look forward to the launch of A2goblog.com).
The talk about housing hits home a little because the wife and I wanted to move to Ann Arbor a few years ago from the Wixom area and the prices were crazy, even when we knew we were paying a high premium and could afford it. Maybe we were a little optimistic to find something close to downtown but the lack of new construction killed the idea. The places we found had wiring or plumbing from the Eisenhower administration (which is cool if thats your thing but we didnt want to spend a lot refurnishing a place) or was shoehorned in whatever plot of land appeared between two other houses.
I can only imagine how rough it can be if you just got a job in Ann Arbor, get all excited to move with your family and find that your basically priced out of the local market. So I'm on the let's get some more development side of this, at least maybe help the market demand a little.
As to the train station, I can see the idea of improving the station to make it look nicer and be more accomodating for those that use it, but let's not kid ourselves that people will flock to the train. I just did a business trip in Germany where all the travel was via trains and it was awesome. But it wasnt because of the cool stations, it was because German trains run, well like German trains. It was fast, efficient travel. As others have said, the Amtrak line is neither of these, so creating a new Grand Central Terminal will just be a waste for the future.
TL,DR: Occasional politics is okay. A2 needs housing because the market/demand is looking for it. Dont fool yourselves into thinking a new station will make the train be cool.
August 1st, 2017 at 11:54 PM ^
TL;DR saves lives when I'm high
I live in Santa Monica, CA. A 1990 ballot proposal which requires that 30 percent of all new housing units produced in the city annually be affordable to low and moderate income people. Two issues arose. First, to qualify for the housing, you must make under the “moderate-income” ceiling (80% of the Area Median Income or about $63,000 a year for a family of four). But many of these people have less than ideal credit. So, they cannot pass the credit vetting process. This creates units left vacant by contradictory legislation and economics.
The other issue is the resultant polarization of the housing market. While 30% is protected for low to moderate income families, the other 70% is open market and goes to the ultra-wealthy. This leaves a gap in the middle for those making over $63K, but who are not inherently or insanely wealthy. They cannot access the protected 30%, but cannot afford the inflated market rates. So in the end, the city is A) Newer, rich residents that bought their way in and B) Old ‘townies’ that happen to be in the right place 30 years ago and are now locking the doors to “their” community.
To me, that feels more like a failure of maintaining and fixing relatively minor issues with legislation (dealing with credit issues and income bands) than a failure in the goal. Because if 70% of the market is at rate and is $1.4M, that extra 30% at rate might put it down to $1.3M or something, but then you've priced out basically anyone but the hyper-affluent. I'm sure the 30% who at least have a chance to stay in a desirable area would prefer it to the "free" market option where they are 100% priced out and any semblance of economic diversity is lost.
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Free market option is the only one that works, as has been proven time and again throughout the history of the world. Can't fight the natural laws of supply and demand, my friend. Though sadly we continue to try...
Keynesian economics is inherently flawed - no new wealth can be created by government spending, only redistribution.
I will say, while I agree with Brian on most of these issues, I do take issue with the idea that cheap, local housing is viable without a bunch of other societal changes. He mentions how service-sector employees can't live in Ann Arbor, but that's not just because of expensive housing. It's because of diminished wages/purchasing power, higher cost of health care, etc. There really isn't a world in which people making minimum wage can afford a down payment and reasonably monthly payments on even a reasonably-priced house (~$250k). Even bump it up to $12-$15/hr, you're still talking about a take-home pay of under $25k a year, less depending on health care, child care, etc. The only way housing gets affordable to people in this bracket is by government mandate/support for developers, since there are certain costs that are sort of fixed when building a dwelling that they won't be able to recoup with a higher price tag. Maybe you push for high-density, cheap housing, but then you're basically ghetto-izing a contigent of people, and I'm not sure that's a net positive for society either.
You always hear that local politics matter way more than national/state ones because they have a direct effect on you, and that's probably true most of the time. But there are issues that need grander solutions than ward votes, and to me "more affordable housing for people not clearing $100k+ in A2" feels a lot like "A2 votes against climate change" in terms of real effect.
That said, I do think that good urban planning is needed in Ann Arbor, if it has continued the trend I noticed when I last lived there a decade ago.
not a fact - disagree
For us. It's his blog; he can do whatever he wants. I can't imagine you couldn't pick up on the fact this would be a political discussion and just skipped past it if it apparently bothered you this much.
It's also become big business. But being tribal and a big business is very different from being very political. I don't think college athletics is overly political at all.
Now, politics have become more tribal over the last 1-2 generations. But that's a whole other subject.
Frankly I'm just happy to see that everyone can discuss politics in a friendly and rational fashion. Proving that the 'no politics' was clearly unneeded and from now on our off season can include intellectually stimulating political threads where we all treat each other with respect. Isn't this wonderful news everyone?
you're the "deer Lives Matter" dude ?
Go Blue!
Get Serious. Get Hoyt.
^^shameless Hoyt archery plug above....
Matthews for president!
Frequent Ann Arbor Amtrak patron here. The "they have the correct building" take for the Amtrak station is just hilarious. And wrong.
You ever taken an Amtrak train to or from Ann Arbor? That station is a joke. Inadequate seating for a crowded train (which is most of them these days). Two tiny bathrooms. A couple vending machines. A tight parking lot that is a certifiable nightmare to get in or out of when picking up or dropping off someone for one of said crowded trains. It's the broken-down worst.
Go down the line and see what they did with the new station in Dearborn for what Ann Arbor's station should look like.
Rail travel/Amtrak is like bike lanes: Everyone has a hot take about it, but they're usually wrong because they don't understand what it's actually like to use it.
No, of course not. But to point to that station and say "it's fine--I don't understand why you'd need anything more than that" is just simply wrong if you've ever actually spent time in there waiting for a train. It's awful.
I visit A^2 for business and pleasure (I love the place). While the station is overcrowded and staffed by unhelpful people, the greatest issue is the routine breakdowns/pauses between Chicago and Ann Arbor. I claim to know the tracks between Battle Creek and Jackson almost as much as the Chicago lakeshore, and I've lived here twenty plus years. Almost as well. Don't get me started on Amtrak bathrooms and decrepit furniture - the Europeans who often accompany me find our trains "pathetic" given we spend comparably for train service.
OK - maybe an expansion of the current station is warranted, but Ann Arbor's largest revenue source is football Saturdays from September thru November. I travel to AA on those Satudays and I can assure you that AA streets throughout downtown and around campus are simply pathetic. As a whole, the infrastructure in this country is being ignored so money can be wasted on political pet projects that actually have very little benefit for the "common man". The disaster in Flint was politically "man-made" and showed how the lack leadership on infrastructure can have dire consequences. How different is leadership in Ann Arbor than what we saw in Flint ?
Go Blue!
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