Ann Arbor Local Politics! Council Races! Feel The Hits!
tl;dr vote for Ron Ginyard in Ward 1, Kirk Westphal in Ward 2, Julie Grand in Ward 3, Graydon Krapohl in Ward 4, and Chuck Warpehoski in Ward 5.
With the exception of Ginyard in Ward 1 this is a straight council-party ticket that returns the four incumbents to office. (Ginyard is a rotating question mark.) I recommend this for the same reason that I recommend Christopher Taylor's re-election: the future of the city is either a lot of growth or becoming San Francisco. And, really, you don't need to read this one unless you need to know exactly what variety of clownshoes is up against the incumbents in each particular ward.
More generally, the anti party is deeply unserious about the nitty-gritty of running a local government. They vote against by-right developments. Sumi Kalispathy on the water rates:
Kailasapathy, D-1st Ward, suggested students who live in luxury apartments might be incentivized to leave their faucets running if they know they're paying a lower water rate.
This unseriousness is reflected in their candidates. Bannister is already infamous for her many addled statements—my favorite:
Ann Arbor Sarah Palin thinks that people buying $500k+ new condos are also stealing Creedence 8-tracks out of people's cars https://t.co/auUOOcHVaM
— mgoblog (@mgoblog) May 22, 2018
And hoo boy they unearthed some dingers this time.
Ward by ward stuff is after the jump but with the exception of Ward 1, which features a ghost versus a nutcase, things get very repetitive as I say "this is an incumbent council party person who mostly votes for development" and "uh... bless your heart." Be warned. I did try to keep this as brief as possible.
[After THE JUMP: ward by ward.]
WARD 1
This is an open seat contested by a cipher with no concrete goals and the worst person in Ann Arbor. Ron Ginyard is the cipher. He's a political neophyte who hasn't bothered to vote since moving back to town four years ago and has no concrete ideas on his website. Judging from his appearance at a candidate forum he'd probably be a legitimate swing vote affiliated with neither side but leaning council party.
His opponent is Jeff Hayner, an ICE fan (row 561), "SJW"-deployer (row 4987 and 5 others), MLive ban-sufferer (row 284) and coffee-dad-level hashtagger…
Another tragic #pedestrian death in #AnnArbor, how many deaths/injuries since #a2council majority adopted #VisionZero #CompleteStreets? Who will answer for this? Former Mayor vetoed sensible changes to ordinance, blood on his hands. Who started #WarOnCars? Who loses?
— JLH (@JeffreyHayner) April 14, 2018
…who shows up to city council meetings to yell at people. His politics is incoherent furious nonsense. This was made obvious by his twitter feed, which had so many bombshells in it that Hayner tried to delete everything in it and finally gave up, taking it private. This was too late.
Hayner is not just a NIMBY...
Jeffrey Hayner opposes the lower town development. "We want our neighborhood back — it was stolen and replaced by a weed-filled lot." #A2Council pic.twitter.com/xIRryBM3Uw
— Peter Honeyman (@a2_peter) November 10, 2017
...he is a BANANA.
Jeff Hayner also in the house. He hates this proposed 13-story “pre-fab student hive.” #A2Council pic.twitter.com/4WgdCNPNUA
— Peter Honeyman (@a2_peter) August 15, 2016
His one redeeming quality is that he's never tried to cloak his opposition to building housing by saying that he would like some other financially infeasible thing on a surface parking lot. Hayner is very clear that he cares about nothing other than himself and various Hayner-alikes who show up to protest a dense housing development within walking distance of the hospital because it "only" has 0.9 parking spots per apartment and he might be slightly inconvenienced when he tries to park on the city's street. As a bonus, he has also been captured by Dahlmann.
It's hard to imagine an Ann Arbor resident who is more ill-suited to city council.
One other candidate of note is Ryan Hughes, who is running as an DSA-affiliated independent. He is likely doomed by the nonsense that is partisan local elections since the number of straight ticket Dem voters in Ann Arbor will overwhelm people paying attention to local races—especially this November—but he both has stated political positions and cares about people; the other two candidates check only one box.
WARD 2
Kirk Westphal is a council party member on the correct side of all those 7-4 votes. He says things that indicate he grasps the challenge facing the city and wants to address it...
In a growing job market, if you don't/can't build new construction for the missing middle, AND don't allow market rate construction, you're left with the wealthy displacing those currently occupying middle-income housing, or demo/rebuilding their structures into something they feel suitable. What is frustrating is the lack of focus on policy prescriptions, and heavy dose of "just stop until we figure this all out" (which no desirable city has).
...and I appreciate that he can describe the effect of AA's current policies lucidly. He is a remarkably calm person on social media. He also supports ranked choice voting, which yes please.
Kathy Griswold is his opponent. Griswold has spent a bizarre amount of time over the past few years leading the opposition to various ballot initiatives. She's opposed four separate millages and Ann Arbor's move to eliminate single-digit-turnout off-year elections. Given that these efforts appear to be funded primarily by existing landlords like the guy who owns McKinley and the city's good friend Dennis Dahlmann, my assumption is she is engaged by these people to front for them when a tax that would cut into their bottom line makes the ballot. (Eliminating off year elections threatens Jane Lumm, an independent and anti.) Naturally, she would represent their interests if elected to council.
This goes for Eaton as well, who received donations from the McKinley guy and only did not get them from Dahlmann this time around because the Y-Lot quid pro quo became controversial. The "greedy developers" meme is extremely frustrating because guys who have developed, past-tense, who are just trying to keep rents sky-high get a pass from people who hate change.
WARD 3
Julie Grand, council party, 7-4, etc. obviously frustrated by some of the dim bulbs on the other side of the aisle and makes that publicly known. This is a valuable service in these dire times when expertise, intelligence, and the ability to spell your name correctly in two tries are apparently no longer requirements for public office. I treasure her open disdain for the goofballs who don't do the reading.
In addition, Grand understands how to work the levers of government. She and a couple of housing commission members were able to scrape together several different sources of funding to rebuild some of Ann Arbor's existing housing stock.
Alice Liberson, Grand's opponent, then attacked Grand's housing bonafides in a post on WEMU's website:
At the recent League of Women Voters debate, my opponent said if the sale of the library lot to Core Spaces goes through, we will have 5 million dollars for affordable housing, and could create 200 to 500 units of affordable housing. Really? That’s $10,000 to $25,000 per unit. If this is true, why are they willing to pay Core Spaces 1.5 million dollars for nine units of housing, or $162,000 per unit. Someone needs to check their math.
Okay. Of the $18.3 million being spent on the rebuild, approximately 15 comes from the federal government. Another 900k comes from the county. Ann Arbor has a 450k grant and then there is 1.9 million dollars that is unclear because it's just listed as a "loan." That's either 8k or 42k of city money per unit; I am just spitballing here but it's clear that Grand's aware that small local dollars can be spun into large federal grants. Liberson is not. Liberson's post has several other errors, and is particularly ironic because her complaints that Ann Arbor doesn't have a newspaper are paired with various assertions that MLive's solid local reporting clearly refutes.
WARD 4
Graydon Krapohl: incumbent, 7-4 votes, very very bald, former Marine. Krapohl is pretty quiet and doesn't do a lot on the internet so there's not much else to say. Details of his tenure can be found on Ann Arbor Votes, a non-partisan site. Downside: @aol.com email address.
Elizabeth Nelson was a hurried replacement for Joseph Hood, who dropped out after a disastrous early candidate forum and revelations that he was—gasp—a Republican. Unfortunately, this vetting job didn't go any better. Nelson sent fake city notices to a neighbor who hadn't painted their garage door; those only stopped when the neighbors filed a police report. This was Nelson's comment to Ryan Stanton:
"All I can say is people who know me understand this is the kind of silly thing I would do," the candidate said this week. "It became kind of a fun challenge to see how real I could make it look."
The NIMBYiest of all crimes.
Nelson's website is filled with the usual dogwhistles about "million-dollar condos" and "more taxes and more millages"; the latter is particularly disingenuous because city tax rates are going down. She suddenly appeared on the scene to exhort city council not to buy back the Y Lot because "years of litigation" would ensue; approximately a week of litigation ensued before a settlement. Hard pass.
WARD 5
Chuck Warpehoski: incumbent, 7-4 votes, Quaker(!), director of a local nonprofit. A 2016 Daily endorsement covers the basics if you would like an article-length discussion of Warpehoski's priorities. I think it says something about something that the very worst thing the Eaton faction could come up with about Warpehoski is that he correctly pointed out that several of the people furious about the Lowertown development were advocating for a PUD*, and several years before the very same people were at council advocating against the proposed PUD. This as spun as "question[ing] the integrity" of those people. I'd characterize it more as pointing out their lack thereof.
Ali Ramlawi does have a bit of a track record after running unsuccessfully for the other Ward 5 seat, currently held by Chip Smith, last year. Ramlawi's 2017 campaign was summed up ably by Chris Dzombak, to the point where I have nothing more to add. I mean:
"We should be a better city," Ramlawi said. "I think we should be the city that I fell in love with back in 1985. It's not the same now."
This is impossible and also would be harmful to lots of people. But at least he doesn't do NIMBY crimes.
*[Planned Unit Development, which is a zoning variance tailored to a specific building proposal. A previous failed attempt to develop the Lowertown site got a PUD passed so any other development more or less had to be 1) the exact same thing that failed earlier or 2) rezoned.]
Did you get through this? Here's a cookie.
OH MY Gosh.... first time I've seen that Patton Oswalt clip. Hilarious. There's a younger extra in the background 2-3 guys to Oswalt's right that is follwing and agreeing with his hilarious monologue. Too funny.
What are the odds that A2 will one day end up like San Fran where you will find 20lb bags of poop on every corner and homeless junkies shooting up in front of the town mayor? Of course not because A2 is smart enough to bus those types to San Fran!
I would've assumed with a user name like Craptain Crunch you'd be in favor of the poop bags.
Not until global warming remakes Michigan into the new Cali climate
Yeah cities that bus their homeless off to other cities are just assholes pushing their responsibility onto other tax payers. And those 'types' are primarily mentally ill people that need help, not bus rides. Get a fucking conscience man.
Thanks Brian. I was born and raised in Ann Arbor and recently returned. I am 60 own a home and support your perspective. Sure I wish Ann Arbor would stay the same but in many ways it is largely unchanged since I was a kid.
I moved back from the Detroit suburbs and while the A2 housing prices are higher, they do not seem to be significantly so. But there is a much higher cost of entry floor and tight inventory of homes - buying a home here last year was a challenge. Not too many starter homes in A2. Property taxes are also significantly higher driving up the cost of housing.
I consider myself a moderate - remember Bill Milliken? - but I think higher density housing is good. I would not want rent control but some percentage of affordable housing set asides seems like a good idea for new development. More inventory of all types of housing is good.
What we do not need is public housing. I spent one summer working at several of the public projects in Ann Arbor - one of Eisenhower, Green Road and others. The units were significantly over crowded and had a number of issues. I remember some significant crime problems with the units at Dexter and Maple.
I would rather see affordable housing funded by developers - kind of a pay to play tax where there is a x% set aside of affordable units required for new development - mix the affordable units in with whatever it is you are building.
You're describing "inclusionary zoning," which is a common approach to addressing affordability issues. IZ is controversial amongst wonky housing types because it drives up the cost of new buildings, raises market rates, and doesn't require anything of existing landowners. But it does produce units.
IZ's prohibited by state law but the city gets a version of it by offering zoning bonuses to developers. A couple of projects on the docket, Lowertown and the Library Lot, would create about 80 affordable units in exchange for getting zoning that makes their projects viable. That's not that many but it's more than the city's managed to do over the last few years.
I very much agree that housing of all types is necessary. Almost all of Ann Arbor is zoned for the two most expensive types: single family detached and high-rises. Small apartment buildings up to six stories are the cheapest to build per unit but the small amount of land zoned for any rise makes it more practical for developers to build high and charge high prices.
Public housing has issues but I don't know if it causes those issues or just houses them--kind of think the latter. It's rough being poor in America. The proposed Y-Lot workforce housing is a different kind of project that I think would be good; it would largely be aimed at people who work downtown and wouldn't have the same sort of issues, I think.
I'm just confused by this, and maybe because I don't spend tons of time on here. I thought politics were a huge no-no on this board? Or is that all just some kind of inside joke that I was never around for? Sorry in advance for my ignorance...
As always, the no politics rule applies to us in the peanut gallery, but Brian is free to post what he wants. And another unspoken rule is that dozens upon dozens of people will reflexively rush to the comment section to complain about it (not saying you are OP) because they can't fathom a free blog that provides invaluable content about a sports team would have a different set of rules for the guys who create said content.
Hmmm. A ward-by-ward post regarding who favors urban expansion versus who wants to limit the types of buildings that get built? Sounds to me like a . . . (wait for it) . . . ‘Zone Read.’
amirite?
Ann Arbor and San Francisco are already very similar, in terms of liveability and the overall aesthetic. That is one of the reasons I love it so much. Art, sports, lefty politics, an embarrassment of culinary delights. San Francisco has a bit more grittiness, and maybe tilts at more eye-rollingly NIMBY windmills.
Same. SF/Bay Area resident for 30 years now, don't know any of these candidates & barely understand the issues - BUT when someone says "become like SF" I know they're talking prices & congestion.
I'd add gentrification, but in comparison to when I was growing up AA has ALREADY gentrified to an extent that would cause street protests in SF - and I never heard anyone say a thing about it either!
It just kind of... happened!
I am very disappointed with the lack of complaining about "no politics" in the comments. It's a reliable chuckle that I miss.
It’s because all those Commenters were banned from previous posts...
Stop. Brian, stop.
In the spirit of the “No politics” rule I did not read the original post. But I did enjoy all of the comments...
Nobody on this site was complaining when Brian, alums & students were protesting on Mark Schlissel's doorstep after the Shane Morris debacle. No one was complaining when the writers of this site were calling for Dave Brandon's & Brady Hoke's head. If you think that that wasn't politics, you are fooling yourself. An AD and head coach of a publicly funded university are political positions at a ton of levels. That protest was about leveraging public sentiment against the gross mismanagement of the Michigan Athletic Department.
This post is not about partisan politics. Ann Arbor is democratic through and through, so this isn't a left versus right argument. This is about leveraging public sentiment to make Ann Arbor a more livable city that has nothing to do with democrats or republicans unless you are hell set on making it partisan.
You're wrong. Discussion of the leadership of the university and the football team is relevant as this is a Michigan sports blog. Ann arbor political elections do not relate to sports and are not relevant. Did you really not think this through before posting?
As long as the University of Michigan resides on the geographic area designated as Ann Arbor, how said city runs itself has an impact on the school and, by extension, the athletic department.
And as always, if you don't care about a topic, you can just skip it. Unless I'm doing the internet wrong, you can still not consume free content as you wish.
then by that rational... so is said state politics and so is said country politics.... listen to yourself before you post..... uofm also is in geographic area designated as michigan and geographic area designated as usa.....
I do listen to myself. And you can absolutely keep drawing that line farther and farther out. And while I don't think this blog should or will become a cauldron of unrelated political discussion, when it affects UM it should be noted. I mean, nobody complained when Brian et al discussed the numerous lawsuits against the NCAA related to the use of players' likenesses to sell video games, to name but one example of a national-level political discussion that has an impact on UM.
But on a practical level, the lowest level of politics tend to affect local people the most, and so decisions by local politicians in Ann Arbor will have an outsized effect on UM compared to, say, an immigration issue.
So yeah, I did think it through. The fact you didn't think it through and/or don't agree with my take doesn't make it wrong.
dude-- do you listen to yourself????? not politics????....
Thanks for the post. I find it more useful and posts about restaurants and what not, and even if it wasn’t, I would defend your right to post on the topic. Ever since MgoBlog 3.0 hit the streets, I have been disheartened by the sense of entitlement exhibited in the comment sections, as if they were paying for and orchestrating a complex and drawn-out software overhaul themselves. And the same holds true for their response to what is a well thought out piece on local politics, an issue which is certainly less OT than talking about cars every Tuesday. I have lived in and out of Ann Arbor for over 50 years and have dealt with planning commissions and local politics and have found that the lack of attention paid to the character and quality of people elected to local office directly affects the quality of life in town. Thanks for elevating awareness on what will be the defining issues for Ann Arbor going forward. Whether or not the readership agrees is less important than helping each of us to have a real reasoned opinion. That said, here is my two bits:
1) Brian is spot on with the underlying economic issue. Choke off supply, and ensuing demand punishes the majority. Housing and development policy must be based on the imperative to create affordable housing.
2) The past is just that, a place for fond memories. But it is a horrible paradigm for solving the problems of today.
Totally agree on the reader-entitlement issue. I really hope it's just a very vocal minority who can't seem to not complain this whole off season.
The new site has some bugs and some less-than-perfect elements. Seth has been pretty responsive to complaints and feedback, and has outlined what's getting fixed when and what will take longer and why.
Also, as a recent returnee to Ann Arbor, I actually really appreciate these local politics posts. Helps me get oriented to what's going on in town, when actually wrapping your head around local issues can be a little difficult. For those that don't care or are somehow offended by these posts, it's beyond me why they just don't read them.
Contemporary America needs to shame those that get offended easily. It is wholly inappropriate for the era and also one of the best non-partisan values to rally around. Policy, not prejudice, is the North Star. If you can't bring that to the table, shut the F up.
The sense of entitlement on this blog has been kicked into overdrive recently, and I agree it seems since the offseason really kicked off along with the new version of the site. But it tends to be worst when the team is (real or perceived) to be struggling, as we are all to varying degrees raving lunatics and sometimes have trouble handling our emotions.
Having worked with large legacy systems and designing wholesale sites, I didn't expect miracles with the transition and I voiced my concerns during the beta. But I still think the site is, overall, an improvement, and I totally get why they dropped the app support as well. Most of the features people want can be accomplished but take time, and I don't think people realize that the new site isn't even 2 months old. You can test as much as possible, but especially when you have to maintain legacy support with an outdated bit of tech in Drupal you're going to only see certain bugs and deal with certain pain points once it's in the wild and real users hammer it. So honestly, the fact we don't get any major site crashes or lost content feels like a win, and I assume that people who complain about the site's functionality and assert it should be easy to fix either (a) don't understand what it takes to make such changes, or (b) assume this blog has a budget and resources that far exceed reality.
I moved out of Ann Arbor in 2009 and sold my interest in some rental properties a couple of years ago. The seemingly rapid development has winners and losers. I was a loser as a landlord because the rents on the north side of town were so volatile ($1600 a month for one lease, $1000 a month for the next one). The income some years barely covered the taxes.
I get why some folks are upset; but 1995 Ann Arbor is not coming back.
Could we get 10/27/79 back? That was some damn fine innocent childhood living.
I have a feeling Brian's grandfather wrote a letter to the editor of the Michgan Argus praising Tower Plaza as a great additon to the A2 skyline. He also frequented Orange Julius in the lovely University Towers.
He's ACTUALLY calling for lower rise housing, if you just READ the damn stuff. Fewer 15+ story buildings, way MORE 5-10.
And I used to enjoy the Orange Julius on South U regularly as a Burns Park youth - but NOT the wind tunnel that eyesore created!
To have a “no politics” policy that is strictly enforced in the comment section and then to author a post endorsing political candidates is indulgent and inconsistent. I don’t care how you rationalize it. I don’t care that this is the offseason. I don’t care that “this affects all of us, man.” I don’t care that several people are trying to defend this for whatever reason. It’s hypocritical any way you slice it. There is plenty of valuable content on this site, but this is a bridge too far. I’ll miss the analysis, but I can live without it. Go Blue forever, but it’s time for me to MGoElsewhere for my Michigan football fix.
Building high-quality local communities is the only way to fix our national quagmire. When you have a voice, you use it for good.
Bye....
I'll be honest here and say that mostly I don't give a rat's rear end about local Ann Arbor politics and haven't since Perry Bullard. Having said that, I came in for the soccer game Saturday, and for the first time in many years had occasion to cruise the neighborhoods from Tappan school up Packard and then up Seventh to Miller.
The neighborhoods looks really good at least when compared to my memory. Cambridge Court is still a slum, but it's at least no worse than it was when I lived there. Some of the streets between Main and Seventh are positively shiny. Downtown was jam packed with not your typical game day veteran Wolverine crowd and as such double hard to get around driving, but you could park at both Library Lane and at Ashley.
Having spent my professional life doing Real Estate, I know that this has far more to do with people wanting to maintain their property and investment, along with the ability to borrow and service debt or the presence of a stream of income sufficient for that purpose than it has to do with any government entity either elected, or Monday thru Friday. BUT ... at least the local government types aren't fucking things up. Or at least they're not fucking things up to the extent that local government is fucking things up elsewhere.
Just sayin'.
As an aside, I saw a girl in a red sundress kind of a thing and some ear buds boogying hard down Stadium, heading toward Ypsi around 7 or so. Then I caught her again balleting up Main Street toward downtown at about 9:30. It was an impressive display of endurance and some really good dancing. Has anybody seen this girl shaking it around town. I was kind of hoping that she was a thing. If she is, she's a way upgrade over Shakey Jake.
I saw that girl twice last weekend, and have seen her in the past on Football Saturdays. She must put on a 3 hour playlist and jam the fuck out. And I wouldn't rule out drugs being involved.
Most replies from Brian on a topic in years (including the site redesign), and it is about Ann Arbor politics of all things. What a time to be alive.
This is some Brandonesque lack of self-awareness, or hubris.
I don't know man. Feels to me more like picking your battles and appreciating when and where you have personal space for engagement within the colossus you built. What have you done lately?
It’d be easier to swallow if the site redesign hadn’t been a total disaster and took forever anyway. That, coupled with the general attitude on the front page are becoming a little hard to take. I tend to lean in the same direction politically as Brian, so I don’t disagree with his opinions, I disagree with them being here. If his passion is politics now, perhaps he should have a political blog.
Brian has a computer science degree or something right? I suppose if so it would be nice to see some mea culpa's and roadmap communication precede local politics sure, but whatever. The dude is an entertaining writer so I will stick around.
Longtime lurker.
I don't live in Ann Arbor anymore, but my family does. I appreciate articles like this because I still care deeply about how Ann Arbor evolves (or doesn't).
To me, you can't separate Ann Arbor from the University of Michigan. To act as though local council races, ongoing city development, increased housing prices, etc. have no impact on the university (and by extension, the athletic department) seems short-sighted.
I'm not sure I need to read articles like this every day, but even if they were being written that frequently (which they aren't), it's pretty easy to not read something.
I agree that you can't separate University of Michigan and Ann Arbor. I hope there's enough growth over the next 10ish years where I don't have to say this anymore, and Ann Arbor can stand on its own.
I hadn't heard of Ryan Hughes before, but I'm not sure that he is actually "DSA-affiliated" rather than just choosing to refer to himself a democratic socialist. DSA has made only a small handful of endorsements nationally and they have been pretty strategic about who they have thrown their weight behind (mostly progressive candidates running in deep blue districts).
I am particularly interested in Hughes' choice to run as an independent in a city so deeply Democratic. Its possible that he is simply using it as an angle to extend his airtime and build name recognition for a future run, but I wonder if we will start to see leftist candidates choose to break away from the Democratic party and run as independents as a viable electoral strategy.
The Human Rights Party (HRP) of Ann Arbor was a radical socialist third party that influenced local politics in the period 1971 to 1975 and had two members elected to Council. It later morphed into Socialist Human Rights Party and then faded away in the later 1970's.
Back then Republicans had the majority on council.
I actually heard from a supporter that he missed the deadline to register as a Democrat, so that's why he's independent this year. But your theory about building name recognition for a future run makes a lot of sense.
Given the trainwreck that is the Ward 1 Democratic primary this year, I wonder if Hughes felt he'd have a better shot than usual as an Independent.
I genuinely enjoy these sidebars into life in AA. It's been a decade+ since I graduated and I haven't been able to make it up to a game in a couple years, but really enjoyed everything about living in that town and the few times Brian puts up articles like this, I feel a little bit like I'm back there. Any reccomendations for AA-news resources other than MLive?
The "Official Ethics of Mgoblog" page up in the About section was originally posted in 2006. There are a few things I want to highlight:
Perhaps this will all look rather quaint years from now when I get bored of my mountain of million dollar bills and scan through my archives in search of a quick confirmation of my naivete...
Anyway, the point of this is so y'all can police me if I start slipping. Yes, there are places to slip to.
and
Things I wont post on:
- Politics
- Karate Kid
- The White Shadow
- Musical groups that were last relevant in 1986.
In the spirit of "policing you," here are my humble recommendations:
- Review and amend the FAQ to give yourself the room to comment on politics
- Explain, in the FAQ and a dedicated FP post, all the reasons you have for posting. IMO, the ones you have given are reasonable: you are a resident, you want to use your platform, etc.
- Expand on the MGoBoard FAQ (side note: these are on a separate page, which I feel is somewhat confusing to commenters who don't make much of a distinction between the FP and Board) the reason why Politics is listed under "UNWELCOME, KTHX." To me it's pretty obvious that partisan politics muddies up the board and wrecks the community with pointless mud-slinging, and for that I appreciate the ban. In that vein, respectful comments on government operations can be tolerated (for example, the board posts discussing U-M alum Judge Kethledge's potential nomination to the SCOTUS). Others apparently do not see it this way.
- In general, I think there is a disconnect between the "rules" as written and how they are followed and enforced. I know you are busy with HTTV, 3.0, and summer content. But I think a refresh of the blog values and how they are expressed would put a lot of these complaints to bed. I'm not saying you have to explain yourself to your readers, but a little bit more respect and communication is warranted.
Thank you for keeping me informed on the local news of city I know longer live in but will always love
Either the author of this article doesn't pay property taxes in Ann Arbor... or he owns a stake in a real estate development firm.
"Ann Arbor is Michigan's fifth-largest city, but it has the largest tax base of any Michigan city or township... The current total taxable value of Ann Arbor property is $5.5 billion compared to $4.6 billion for Detroit."
https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/compare_size_of_tax_base_in_mi.html
Just for the sake of comparison: Ann Arbor is roughly 28 square miles and a population of 120,000. Detroit is roughly 143 square miles and has a population of 675,000
Taylor and his cronies act in the best interest of businesses, developers and the University. They lack transparency and spend frivolously... like proposing to build an $80 million dollar train station, or how they put up "art" that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or spend $500k on a road study
Taylor is a lawyer and the son of a famous doctor. His contributors are mostly the owners and CEOs of Ann Arbor business' He probably has no difficulty relating to the common middle class family in town... The same families that are being hurt most by his policies.
A more relevant would be tax base per capita. Ann Arbor may have a larger tax base than Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe Shores, but if they have 1/20 the population the comparison isn't apples to apples. And the $80 million train station will (if it happens) be paid for mostly by the federal government.
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