They can break your heart – all those beautiful children with their bright happy faces and hand-made signs. And the teenagers, with their energy and conviction. Greta Thunberg, with her solemn deliberate face and assured delivery. We (all the humans living and dead since the beginning of the Industrial Age) have let them down. Sorry, kids. Too bad. After all, even the people in high places have known about this for decades. This has been well documented: Losing Earth: A Recent History, by Nathanael Rich, is an excellent example. (I found that I had to sit down and read it cover to cover, like a novel.) Most of the people living before the 20th Century might be excused. They were just busy living. But first small voices, then louder ones have been telling us that we were ruining the planet. I still have my original copy of Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance(1992). Later he made a movie, An Inconvenient Truth (2006) which was very explicit about the causes and effects of global warming. I sat in the audience at the Michigan Theater and like most, I felt that the case had been made. And yet… Here we are. On the brink. The average global temperature has been continuing to rise, though the 2018 average was slightly lower than the preceding three years (about 0.8° C above the historical mean, according to NOAA).
We noted a number of important studies in the post Climate Change and Ann Arbor: Investing in the Future. The IPCC report issued in 2018 was a substantial one. As somber as it was, it was also a political document (many nations did not want to sign on to the limitations suggested by a temperature increase limited to 1.5° C above the historical average). Not a lot of progress has been seen since then; indeed, we go backwards, especially in the U.S., where we withdrew from the very weak Paris agreement and our EPA has been busily undoing the rather partial attempts at limiting CO2 that were instituted in the Obama administration. Do you believe that Mitch McConnell and other powerful people from the coal states are really moved by those shining child faces?
There are no shortage of reminders. Every day we hear of new disasters and see heat maps. But the effects on our global system are far beyond rising seas and stronger hurricanes. The danger is that the effects on every physical and biological system on the planet that sustains life may exceed its equilibrium limits – the “tipping point”. Plenty of scientists are on the case. Most recently (September 2019) a comprehensive review in Science magazine tells us (with lots of specificity) that a further increase to 2.0 degrees above the historical mean will cause effects that are accelerated, not merely linear. And it appears likely that we are headed that way.
Hopes and Prayers
So what can we do on a local level? We have two courses of action, not mutually exclusive.
Amelioration. We do what we are able as a single small city not to add to the global CO2 burden. This will not help us locally, but it’s the right thing to do.
Adaptation. We consider what policies can help our community survive and thrive over the decades to come. In other words, we try to be a resilient community.
It is increasingly being recognized that a local response will be necessary for human communities. The Association for the Advancement of Science (a venerable organization that served mostly for a long time as the publisher of scientific papers in its journal Science) has become increasing active in advocacy and education. This recent article,How We Respond, is an ongoing report of local community response.
We first need to decide what the desired outcomes for our community are. Then we need to evaluate all our policies and consider how they will lead to those outcomes. This thoughtful account of one community’s effortmakes the important point that a city is a complex system. Atlanta has historical problems with equity, economic development and (increasingly) environment. They adopted a multi-sectoral approach (the Just Growth Circle) with extensive collaboration. But as they indicate, often incentives point in opposing directions and building collaborative efforts is not automatic or easy.
Certainly our policies (the City of Ann Arbor) exhibit cognitive dissonance when compared to our stated goals. For most of this century, policy decisions have been firmly pointed toward growth, wealth generation, and especially economic development in the form of attracting more and more high-tech firms. They have also encouraged growth in terms of increasing development of real estate, which generates wealth. Our stated goals are for “sustainability” but growth of the form we are encouraging is not sustainable and leads to more CO2 generation. They are for “equity” but the search for high-value technology firms has brought an influx of highly paid workers, and concurrently real estate development to provide high-yield housing for these workers. This results in increased values for real estate, which has resulted in displacement of current residents and lack of housing for lower-income workers. How many residents can our land-locked little city really support?
What will be adaptive in consideration of changes to come? Of course, first we need to estimate what those changes will be, and predicting the future is difficult. Our local climate has been relatively forgiving. But global changes will affect us too. We need a more considered, system-wide view that considers what environment those charming children will inherit.
UPDATE: City Council will consider moving toward a carbon neutrality plan. Here is the Council resolution 11.4.19 that describes the problem. Will the solution consider all the inputs, including a limit on growth?
Cities are born, live, and die. Like any living thing, they are changing constantly. For most of us who live in one, we don’t see the beginning and the end, only the change. Ann Arbor, of course, is constantly changing. Here is what we said in the post, Ann Arbor Emergent.
Ann Arbor is rushing toward the future. Each day, each moment, events small and large are shaping the new reality. There is no possibility of remaining anchored in the past because we are leaving that behind us. The only question is what shape the future will take and who will frame it. What will emergent Ann Arbor be like and whose vision will best describe it?
So much of the civic debate about policy in Ann Arbor has been about the direction of change. It has precisely been about the question of whose vision will guide the city as its new shape emerges. The two opposing sides in this debate have been given many names, none of them adequately descriptive. Most recently, we defined them as the Powers That Be and the Neighborhoods. In that post (The Primary Struggle for the Future of Ann Arbor), we described the Powers That Be as the “majority”, which is no longer quite appropriate, since seats on Council other than the Mayor shifted from one side to the other in the 2018 election. That post defined a number of the issues under contention. The Neighborhoods are generally understood to be long-term residents of Ann Arbor, though not all long-term residents agree on many points.
The accusation by the Powers and their supporters, like the self-named YIMBYs, has been that the Neighborhoods are opposed to change. This is wrong on its face (not all change is the same, and long-term residents don’t oppose everything that is change) and in practical reality, since change is constant. While each decision by Council guides change to some extent, we are now about to experience a potential major shift in focus and purpose to emergence of a future Ann Arbor. Our city is embarking on a new Master Plan, and the consequences are likely to be substantial. This is a moment when all sides and all citizens can engage at a meaningful level.
Master Plan
The MasterPlan is both literally and figuratively the foundation for city planning. For most cities, it is the projection of the city’s vision of the future, and a map for how to get there. In Michigan, this process is determined by thePlanning Enabling Act (P.A. 33 of 2008). As the Act says,
A master plan shall address land use and infrastructure issues and may project 20 years or more into the future. A master plan shall include maps, plats, charts, and descriptive, explanatory, and other related matter and shall show the planning commission’s recommendations for the physical development of the planning jurisdiction.
Historically, the Master Plan has had no statutory authority (it is not a law, merely a suggestion) but has been used to direct policy. The legal direction for land use is the zoning ordinance and map, which is wrapped around with many restrictions and directions as to how a particular parcel may be used. The zoning map is a to some degree a reflection of the Master Plan that is sometimes subject to change. We have often seen Council award zoning or approve site plans for developers of projects that do not harmonize with the Master Plan. And yet the argument that “this is not consistent with the Master Plan” or “this reflects the Master Plan” is often heard in rezoning and planning debates. My reading of the Planning and Enabling Act is that there is some intent to coordinate these two planning functions in this relatively recent rework of Michigan law. Specifically,
For a local unit of government that has adopted a zoning ordinance, a zoning plan for various zoning districts controlling the height, area, bulk, location, and use of buildings and premises. The zoning plan shall include an explanation of how the land use categories on the future land use map relate to the districts on the zoning map.
The Zoning Ordinance (now properly called the Unified Development Code) itself becomes very granular. Each zoning classification has attributes clearly defined, down to physical limits (height, setback, parking requirements, and other), and each parcel has its place. The truly marvelous Ann Arbor Zoning Map shown on GIS (Geographical Information Service) refers by number to a PDF file showing the zoning classifications for each area. (Because it is GIS, it has many layers showing many characteristics of this terrain, but we are talking zoning.) Want to know your own zoning and that of your neighbors? This is the place.
The Ann Arbor zoning reference map as shown on GIS (mapAnnArbor). The individual marked squares are references to zoning maps for specific sections.
Once you have identified the section of the map that interests you, you may enlarge the magnification to study detail. Or you may simply note the numbered square and go directly to the pdf file that shows a parcel-by-parcel zoning classification.
Zoning map for a portion of the Burns Park neighborhood. The PL is Burns Park school and park. Note the different residential zoning classifications.
Current status
The City of Ann Arbor’s Master Plan is currently a collection of plans, not a single document. The Land Use Plan (2009) is what we usually think of when citing the Master Plan. This incorporates several area plans: Lower Town, Central Area (1992), University of Michigan Property, West Stadium Boulevard Commercial Corridor, and also the Northeast Area (2006), South Area (1990), and West Area (1995) plans. This version of the Land Use Plan was actually a compilation by Planning staff of existing plans. Some of us who observed this process felt there may have been some changes and omissions in the cut-and-paste. The original area plans were the product of citizen committees and long public sessions and hearings. The residents of the designated areas were the major decision-makers and citizens from elsewhere in the city were not much involved in the specific areas. The Downtown Plan (2009) was a complete rewrite of the previous plan; “A2D2” was a product of the first wave of serious development push in which height limits and parking requirements were changed drastically. Likewise, an ambitious Transportation Plan Update (2009) called for serious investment in rail transit via several projects that have not been realized. (A new Transportation Plan Update is now underway, with a consultant and a committee at work. No news yet.) The PROS Plan is revised by the Parks Commission every five years (the current one is through 2020). And notably, the Treeline Allen Creek Urban Trail was incorporated into the Master Plan in 2017.
All these different plans have been adopted by the Planning Commission as part of the Master Plan, which means that they are policy documents and in theory are all directives for future action. A “plan”, if adopted by the appropriate body (which is most often the City Council) has some force, though many parts may never be implemented.
There are many other documents listed as “resource documents” that are not part of the Master Plan, although some of them are called “plans”. Note, for example, the Connecting William Street Plan, which was produced by the DDA as the result of a long public process after the City Council requested that the DDA formulate a plan for use of the block containing the Library Lot. The final plan got a cold shoulder from the Council, indeed, it was never taken up. (It basically envisioned how each part of the area in question could be developed to the maximum height and density.) In a somewhat questionable move, the Planning Commission placed this rejected plan on its resource list. If it had been more successful, it too would doubtless be part of the Master Plan. This story is instructive because it illustrates how the Planning Commission can act autonomously, not merely as an advisory committee to the Council.
Process
After a public hearing on May 21, 2019, the Planning Commission adopted a resolution approving “the allocation of resources to solicit both consultant assistance and internal support of a comprehensive master plan update process, rooted in extensive public engagement”. The staff report cites quite a few concerns. They are, briefly (but in same order as named in the report)
The long periods, some as long as 30 years, since adoption of some sections
Possible local effects of global warming
The combined volume and number of plans and resource documents, making policy difficult to parse
Affordability “a … challenge for the City in supporting a diverse population, a robust workforce, and sustainability goals”
Aging of the population
Increasing population
The number of commuters and transportation challenges this entails.
Somewhat confusingly, the Planning administration had already posted an RFP (request for proposals) seeking a consultant to perform the update. The due date for proposals in answer to RFP 19-06 was set as March 7, 2019, two months before the resolution passed by the Planning Commission. There is now a committee evaluating the eleven proposals. Once they have made a recommendation, the contract with the winner will go to Council for approval.
Themes
The RFP provides quite a few clues as to the weight and potential impact of the Master Plan revision. It contains a number of directives to the prospective consultant.
Values
The consultant is asked to begin by developing a set of City values that may be used to evaluate potential consequences of implementation. They are characterized as “high-level evaluation tools (e.g. equity, affordability, sustainability)”. They are evidently intended to carry real weight. “The City aspires to use such values to help support the shift from aspirations to realizations of community goals.”
It is expected that a “vision statement” will be part of a plan. The current Land Use Plan has one which is descriptive of the different systems of the City. But it also indicates the expected product. “The quality of life in Ann Arbor will be characterized by its diversity, beauty, vibrancy and livability…” (from the current Plan)
If values such as those named earlier are used to evaluate every scenario in the Plan, it implies a standard that all provisions must match in some form. As an extreme example, does our park system justify itself in terms of equity and affordability? We have withdrawn a great deal of land from our total city area in search of natural beauty, recreation, and quality of life. If you think this is far-fetched, you may not know that the City Council of the mid-1980s refused to put the first park millage on the ballot because parks were viewed as “elitist”.
Participation
The RFP laudably puts “civic engagement” near the top. This is an important step for a master plan affecting the entire community. It calls for “an innovative, multi-format public engagement process that gathers input from a diverse section of the City, including students, residents, workers/commuters, owners and employers“. However, it also calls for participation of “those who experience the City in varied ways, as … commuters, and potentially aspiring community members“. This indicates that people who are not currently residing here or who do not own businesses here will have some say over the future development of the City. This raises a lot of questions, including one about how those participants will be chosen or recruited.
Plan Consolidation
As noted, there are currently 8 plans and 18 resource documents. The desired result will consolidate all this into a single document less than 100 pages in length. What is wanted is a “unified master plan, that … consolidates the goals of these numerous documents, identifies (and to a large extent reconciles) contradictions within the numerous documents”.
This is something of an earthquake within our current planning structure. It implies considerable editing and condensation of specific plans, most of which were done with public input and often much thought and compromise in order to accommodate a variety of views. As we learned with last year’s condensation of our zoning code into the current Unified Development Code, there can be many omissions, deletions, and even errors in such a process. It is almost impossible for interested citizens and elected representatives to track the extent of such changes. Just as one illustration of a potential effect, the inclusion of the Connecting William Street project (never accepted by Council) in the resource documents suggests how shading and insertion of material could alter the overall plan.
Refocus Land Use
It is clear that an important goal here is to wipe the slate clean and start over again as far as land use goes. Currently our land use map is a accretion of decisions made over decades, often hard-fought and hard-won. The zoning map pins down uses in each area and preservation of neighborhood character has been one of the important criteria. Here is what the RFP says about this:
Identify a future land use plan that addresses the fundamental goals of the City. For example, the plan should identify land use strategies for affordability, sustainability, and a realistic vision for accommodating projected and/or desired population and job growth in the City through 2050 and beyond. This effort will result in a consolidated land use map that uses a single set of land use categories throughout the City, that no longer reflect the subtle distinctions that the current City-by-area land use maps reflect.
And:
…evaluate the current site-specific recommendations from the existing master plan, and eliminate as appropriate. The City seeks to shift from such site-specific recommendations toward character areas, corridors or districts whenever possible, that articulate a character or expectation of how a larger neighborhood might develop, and interact with surrounding areas of the City.
Action Plan
The revised Master Plan is intended to go beyond the usual general vision and set of recommendations. As indicated in the Planning Enabling Act, a zoning plan will be prepared simultaneously to enact the policies indicated. (The answers to questions about the RFP specifies that the consultant is to develop the zoning plan.) Thus, this will be a muscular set of directives ready to go into action.
The document will include a fully prioritized implementation schedule that identifies the highest to lowest priority actions (i.e. ordinance amendment recommendations, further planning recommendations, development review process evaluations/recommendations) for the City to undertake to realize the vision identified in this new Master Plan. (from the RFP)
Where we are at this moment
While the RFP specifies a beginning in July 2019, we are some distance away yet. The evaluations committee is presumably continuing to evaluate the proposers and their offerings. Eleven different sets of professionals take a while to sort out. (I don’t know of any public access to the deliberations of the committee.) Once they make a determination, a contract will have to be negotiated and will have to be approved by Council.
What Does It All Mean?
It is clear to me and to anyone who is paying attention that this is a major leap toward the objective of upzoning Ann Arbor. There has been open talk of eliminating single-family zoning. There has been discussion for years of the need for “missing middle” housing (2-3-4 or more units per parcel). But if the Master Plan is massively redrawn, it could be a push toward even more intensive development. This is likely to be density, density, and more density. We’ve been hearing about it long enough.
The objective that is always cited is affordable housing. We’ll have to discuss the likelihood of that outcome at some other time. To date, most new, denser development has been at the high end of the market (i.e. expensive, not affordable). This is accord with what is happening nationwide. Developers are in business. They build to maximize profit from investment. Unless subsidized, they are not going to build “affordable” housing, no matter how you define that.
Ann Arbor will change, no matter what happens. Only in the last year, many new, denser projects have been approved. The whole block on E. Hoover will be a huge apartment complex. At almost every Council meeting, a new development is approved without controversy. TheLockwood proposalfor an intrusive senior citizen complex in a single-family zone was defeated partly because of its conflict with the Master Plan. Density advocates took that hard. But this was an exception.
Our current planning mechanism doesn’t award any obvious winners and losers. There are wins and losses on all sides, and often politics does play a role. (Doesn’t it in all things?) What appears to be proposed here is to change the rules so that the outcome is predetermined.
If we who live here want to have a role in determining the face of emergent Ann Arbor, we’ll need to pay attention and participate to the extent possible. The future of the city is in the balance.
Breakthrough nears on transit in southeast Michigan.
That was the headline in a recent article in Bridge Magazine. It is referring to the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan. The concept of the RTA is to combine the transit systems of four counties (Oakland, Macomb, Wayne, Washtenaw) into a single authority. It has been just the latest effort to form a truly regional transit system for the metropolitan Detroit region. Asthis account from Curbed Detroit relates, the effort to achieve regional transit in Motor City has been frustrated over and over again. With the creation of the RTA, it was hoped that it might finally be achieved. A carefully constructed plan (RMTP plan) was put forward in 2016, after many “listening tours” and much negotiation. A millage proposal was placed on the November 2016 ballot. It was not successful.
Now there is a last-ditch effort to save the RTA and the possibility of a true regional transit system for Detroit (the only major city without one). But the factors that led to this latest failure, as well as many of the earlier ones, are still here.
Note: for all the illustrations of maps, a larger version may be viewed by clicking on the image.
Precinct-by-precinct vote for the RTA millage in November 2016. Credit to Steve Wilse (map creator) and the Motor City Freedom Riders.
Leadership
The RTA had gone through many birth pangs (for a blow-by-blow legislative account and other history, see our post, The SE Michigan Regional Transit Authority in Progress) before the package of bills was signed into law by Governor Snyder on December 19, 2012. SEMCOG, the SE Michigan regional planning agency, hosted the fledgling organization, supplying office space, support and a web presence. The RTA Board consists of members appointed by the chief executive of each participating unit of government (in the case of Washtenaw County, which has no county executive, the Chair of the Board of Commissioners). The Governor appoints the Chair, who is ex officio (non-voting). Governor Snyder tapped Paul Hillegonds, a distinguished former state representative who has served in many public capacities as well as in industry. He has led the Board through many travails.
The Board had some initial difficulties in settling on a Chief Executive Officer. Then they tapped Michael Ford, the CEO of the newly regional Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, who had had a notable success in the May 2014 vote to form the AAATA (as reported by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, over 70% of voters in Ann Arbor and the two Ypsilanti communities voted themselves a 0.7 mill tax to form the expanded authority). With that background, he seemed the ideal person to lead the RTA through a successful regional millage vote. The November 2016 request to taxpayers of Oakland, Wayne, Macomb, and Washtenaw Counties was to commit to a payment of 1.2 mills for 20 years to support the RTA plan. The millage failed, just barely.
The system map as proposed by the RTA in 2016
Since November 2016 the RTA board has been struggling to find a way to achieve success. The obvious approach is to try again with another millage, presumably after a few tweaks here and there. And the obvious moment is November 2018 (the legislation requires a November election date).
But it has been a rough ride, with several changes in leadership. Michael Ford, with no electoral success to protect him, was terminated in March 2017 because of issues with his expenses. His deputy, Tiffany Gunter, seemed to have things well in hand. Under her leadership, a Board Retreat in May 2017 reviewed the possible issues and approaches (RTA Board Retreat) for the RTA to go forward in a forthright but optimistic manner. But in November 2017 Gunter quit. According to this account in Crain’s Detroit Business, she had not been given a permanent slot and her salary had remained at the same level ($150,000) as when she was Ford’s deputy. (Ford had been paid $200,000.) The supervising planner had departed in May 2017 and now the transportation planner Lucas Reigstad also walked out. Longtime transit supporter Megan Owens, on her Facebook page Support Detroit Transit (November 16, 2017), commented:
Today the RTA pretty much gave up and closed up shop. At today’s board meeting, the interim CEO resigned as did their staff planner, leaving 1 administrative staff person and some consultants. The board has no plans at this time to seek a new CEO. SMART has taken over their one project: RefleX. The RTA appears to have abdicated any leadership role, giving everything into the hands of the Big 4 (County Execs and Mayor Duggan) to decide if and when we get transit. The public, riders and other stakeholders appear to have no say.
Now a “leadership group” consisting of the elected county executives of three counties plus the Mayor of Detroit has been designated to figure out how to put this deal together. Oh, yes, and also the Chair of the Board of Commissioners for Washtenaw County (Andy LaBarre) was invited to sit in. (He is not mentioned by name and not pictured in this report by the Detroit News.) But really, it is the Big 4 (Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel) who hold the fate of the RTA in their hands. Unfortunately, the issues that nearly derailed the RTA before the last millage vote remain.
(Governance) alludes to the manner in which government conducts its business and especially the way it interacts with its citizens. Some of the important elements in this interaction are representation, taxation, and power. People generally want to believe that they are fairly represented at the decision-making level. If the body collects taxes, are they proportionate to the function of the governing body? And does this body exert a level of power over daily lives that is appropriate to its function, not dictatorial or burdensome?
Governance is at the heart of any effort to create regional entities, especially in Michigan. When you combine a number of essentially sovereign civic bodies (four counties and a major city), questions of representation and power immediately emerge. These are very unlike entities. Oakland County is the most populous and richest. In any relationship that involves taxation, they are likely to contribute the most. Detroit is The City but also has a history of economic problems. Wayne County is the county that contains Detroit. Macomb County is the workingman’s county with a history of being extremely independent on electoral issues (remember the Reagan Democrats?). And Washtenaw is the afterthought, a relatively rural county with a small urban area and some assets like the University of Michigan and the associated technology culture. (The original RTA proposal did not include Washtenaw.) All have different things to gain or lose from a regional association.
The Citizens’ Research Council, a nonpartisan and well-respected organization that often analyzes governmental issues in Michigan, published a critical examination of regional authorities, with the RTA as its example. It highlighted how uneven the representation is across the authority.
From the Citizen’s Research Council. Note the population and representation disparities. Larger percent of population indicates less representation.
There was some dispute about representation early on. As finally constituted, the RTA board consisted of two representatives appointed by each county (and one by the City of Detroit), plus a chair (non-voting) appointed by the Governor. I say “each county” but in fact the power of appointment resides with the actual county executives and the Chair of the Board of Commissioners.
The question of how many representatives was solved by simply making everyone the same. Except Detroit. Notice that though this is after all a Detroit Metropolitan organization, the City of Detroit receives only one representative, the least well represented of all.
Taxation
The representation is very uneven with regard to taxation as well. Tax paid is determined by the ad-valorem of each county. (We explained some of this in the post, Taxes and the Local Government Quandary.) Because Oakland County has a lot of valuable property, the tax yield both for the entire county and probably for individual taxpayers is quite high. Note also that they have the highest total millage rate of all entities, meaning that their taxpayers are already paying a lot of taxes.
From the Citizens’ Research Council. Note the disparity in tax contributions. (The last column is total millage the citizens of each county are assessed, not the RTA millage.)
The answer to this inequitable (according to relative investment) arrangement was to make expenditures directly related to the funds contributed by each entity. (For reference, Senate Bill 909 as adopted.)
An authority shall ensure that not less than 85% of the money raised in each member jurisdiction…is expended on the public transportation service routes located in that member jurisdiction.
Of course, this makes it almost impossible to have a truly regional effort. The two Oakland County Board members, Chuck Moss and Timothy Soave, both of whom have solid financial and policy backgrounds, addressed a remarkable memo (Oakland RTA memo) to Ford and Gunter before the November vote. Presumably some of their concerns were addressed, since they later acceded to the ballot issue. But they note, “this 85% rule will require annual monitoring and different expenditure levels yearly as TV’s will always change, thereby causing the sum of the total proceeds to change.” Later in the 19-page memo, they complain that the mechanism to assure that RTA will stay with the 85% rule is vague and they also question the fairness of allocating the remaining 15% outside of the required set-aside. Overall, the concern voiced here is that Oakland County will invest more in the RTA than the services provided will justify. But the authors also question the ability of the RTA to administer the sums coming to them under the requirements placed on them, without harming the present local transit providers and systems.
Finally, the plan must establish a binding mechanism to guarantee that the benefits promised to each jurisdiction will be delivered, a mechanism that cannot be overturned by a simple majority vote of the RTA Board.
In other words, having two representatives on the board is not enough when one’s interests may be overwhelmed by the majority. That is a power imbalance.
The CRC’s analysis concludes that representation by appointment in this fashion violates the “one man, one vote” norm for a body with the power to tax and cause many life rearrangements. It posits that such a board should be elected by the population at large. An example of this form would be the Ann Arbor Public Schools. All voters of the district vote for the entire membership of the school board. But it is not a coincidence that City of Ann Arbor concerns tend to dominate. Most voters of the district live in the City. In the case of Oakland County, their higher population numbers would likely give them at least slightly more weight on the RTA than they are being awarded.
Location, location, location
One obvious take-home from examining the results of the 2016 election is that the parts of the 4-county area that voted against the RTA millage were the areas not currently served by transit. The parts where there were a high percentage of yes votes were the densely settled areas where people are using transit to get to work.
Job centers in the RTA area. From the RMTP.
Since fixed-route transit (bus routes) are usually installed only where the population density merits it, the transit web itself serves as a population indicator.
Existing transit services, from the RTMP. The single line between Washtenaw and Wayne Counties is the Air Ride.
In reviewing this, RTA staff suggested to the Board at their spring retreat that perhaps a circumscribed territory for the RTA, addressing only the urbanized areas where there were more yes votes, would be advisable in order to make a new millage more palatable.
Proposed limited territory, from RTA Board Retreat (only dark blue areas would be included in RTA).
This would, however, have two consequences. One is that an increased millage rate (probably 1.5 mills) would be required. It is assumed that the RMTP, which basically covered those areas, would remain intact. It also means that residents of those areas, many of whom are already paying millages for local services, would be asked to take on a considerable tax load for transit alone. For example, Ann Arbor residents would add 1.5 mills to the current 2.7 mills, and thus a homeowner with a house valued at $200,000 would be paying $420 annually. But considering that most Ann Arbor properties are now valued more highly, the more likely number is $630 (based on a market value of $300,000).
The Moss-Soave memo mentioned above makes a particular point about the possible impact on local transit millages, especially if the RTA does not deliver services seen to match its promises. It asks what the RTA will do if local renewable millages fail because of taxpayer fatigue or disillusionment.
Maintenance of local services
One reason for urgency is that the RTA has no current source of funds. When the authorizing legislation was passed, it included a $250,000 appropriation, matched by $250,000 from MDOT. In FY 2014-2015, the Legislature added a special appropriation of $1.1M. Since then, they have obtained some planning grants and received some administrative charges for Federal funds. They ended the fiscal year 2017 (September 30, 2017) with less than $1M.
They could dip into the government monies distributed to the current providers. Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT), Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), and Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA) are now subordinate to the RTA for state and Federal funds. Michigan state transportation tax (gas tax) is distributed to public transit providers via the Comprehensive Transportation Fund. There are both operating subsidies and capital funds. Federal funds from the Highway Trust Fund are also distributed to transit providers by a formula. Because the RTA legislation allows 15% of these funds to be used by the RTA, the amounts distributed to local providers could be reduced by that amount. Of course, doing so would likely harm the ability of those agencies to provide actual transit. To my understanding, locally raised millages are exempt from this. But clearly, unless the RTA can raise additional revenue on its own, it would not be helping the cause of public transit to hang on using those funds.
Disconcertingly, one of the options presented to the RTA board in its spring retreat was the idea of consolidation into one agency.
From the RTA Board retreat – an idea for consideration
On one hand, this is understandable. A long-term complaint and a reason for establishing the RTA was that the suburban SMART system and DDOT have not coordinated well. DDOT is a department of the City of Detroit and is supported by the Detroit General Fund. SMART is supported by millages in various counties and communities (in something of a patchwork). They really were two separate systems and their overlap has been a problem for the greater Detroit community. But on the other hand, different communities have made decisions and commitments in support of these systems, and that is emphatically true of AAATA. Talk about governance issues. Some communities have voted extra taxes for better service. A consolidation does not recognize this.
Some obstacles to a changed RTA
Because this idea was the result of a closely argued process through the Michigan Legislature, any changes would have to pass through transportation committees of both houses and be passed and signed by the Governor in time to write up a new Plan and get the item on the November ballot. It is still possible, but only if everything moves very, very fast. Also, once you open up a piece of legislation, you don’t know what ideas people may have for changing other sections. For example, what if the representation is altered, or the ways funds are distributed?
The impetus for the first pass was to provide a venue for the M-1 (now known as the QLine). The Federal funding for that depended on the creation of a regional transit agency. Now the QLine is built and operating. Might the RTA structure be altered to give it better support? (It is not currently part of the plan.) So many possibilities.
The Big 2
If the news reports are correct, we’ll be hearing soon what the Big 4 have come up with. The ever-hopeful Megan Owens asks supporters to put in a word. Quotes sometimes appear. But they are not always encouraging. The problem is that the county executives of both Oakland and Macomb Counties are still reluctant though they are evidently willing to sit down at the table. They were both unenthusiastic before the November 2016 vote but wound up taking no position. These two (L. Brooks Patterson of Oakland County and Mark Hackel of Macomb County) are used to being the big power in their own turf, and are very territorial. They might even like to have more power over the way the RTA is run. So while Detroit and Wayne County are anxious to complete a plan, the Big 2 will not be rushed, even by the recent drive to entice Amazon to the area. Hackel in particular has made remarks that indicate he is not supportive of the concept. At one time, he mentioned roads and bridges, and recently he has been bringing up autonomous vehicles and the infrastructure to support them. (Macomb County has a strong involvement in that technology.) He was heard on Michigan Radio as saying he wouldn’t support any plan that didn’t recognize that need. The word on the wind was that we’d hear in January. Here we are.
P.S. For those who missed the allusion in the title, Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, and the Scarecrow were tiptoeing through the Wood sharing their fear of Lions and Tigers and Bears (Oh, My). But all they found was the Cowardly Lion.
ADDENDUM: Mary Morgan publishes columns irregularly via Medium. The latest one is a transit update. Sadly, she repeats the Bridge article without much more examination.
UPDATE: An interview with Paul Hillegonds by the Detroit News includes the suggestion that in the absence of a 2018 millage request, the RTA might look for income to survive until 2020.
“In the past, the state has supported us, but local bus services already are stretched,” he said. “The law requires us to stay in business, but if they don’t support the master plan in 2018, we will be running out of resources in 2019.”
Hillegonds mentions that one “Plan B” might be to look for the local bus services to support the RTA. That would presumably mean, as we mentioned earlier, that they might tap into the regular operating budget for the local providers.
SECOND UPDATE: The Big 4 met on a stage with the Economic Club of Detroit (January 23, 2018) and left the RTA hanging once again. As reported by Crain’s, the execs of Oakland and Macomb Counties are still not committing to any solution. It now sounds as though they might be fishing to put some different features into the plan. Wayne County Executive Warren Evans said a decision was needed in the next 45 days if state legislative action is needed.
THIRD UPDATE: Regardingautomated vehicles, the University of Michigan is a leader in this field, including an automated shuttle already in use on campus. The Federal Transit Administration is issuing an RFC for comments.
UM automated shuttle as shown on the FTA site.
FOURTH UPDATE: An interview with Paul Hillegonds and Robert Cramer (who runs SMART bus) at the January 29, 2018 TRU Transit Awards event is recorded in this podcast. Hillegonds is cautiously negative about the notion of only Wayne and Washtenaw Counties joining to form an RTA (as was floated in this Bridge article). He seemed to say that if Washtenaw got its commuter rail, there wouldn’t be money for anything else in the truncated RTA. Also, he does not support any option that requires a change in the statute, which would mean action at the State level. Instead, he stated that deputies of the County executives were working on a slightly amended plan that would maintain most of the current version. One possibility is more cross-county routes. The decision needs to be made by April or sooner to allow for work needed to put the item on the ballot. He said that he hopes for a consensus on the Board.
Only those communities that currently “opt in” with local property taxes to support SMART bus service should be included in a millage proposal to support regional mass transit, Patterson said.
Doesn’t sound like much of a consensus for a new millage proposal.
“I will not betray them and slip some, or all of them, against their will, into a tax machine from which they can expect little or no return on their investment.”
SIXTH UPDATE: Frustration with the Oakland County blockage has led some advocates to push the idea of a Wayne-Washtenaw RTA, presuming that the votes will be there since they were before. However, as we have noted, this would require state legislative action, and soon. There are many difficulties with this scenario, but here is one enthusiastic scenario from a previous member of the RTA board. (Richard Murphy now works at the Michigan Municipal League.)
SEVENTH UPDATE:February 14, 2018 – looks as though the Board of Commissioners of Washtenaw County is ready to follow the dream. A BOC special meeting (on February 15) will have a discussion of a resolution in support for a Washtenaw-Wayne RTA. According to a report by the Free Press, the hope of a commuter rail is probably driving this action.
EIGHTH UPDATE: The BOC did pass the resolution (with three commissioners absent) on February 15. It instructs the County Administrator to “appropriately engage in discussions about a possible transit agreement between Washtenaw County, Wayne County, the City of Detroit, and other related public entities“. The Administrator is requested to provide a report of options by June.
TENTH UPDATE: The outgoing Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, urged Detroit Chamber of Commerce members to get behind a four-county transit plan. According to Crain’s Detroit Business, Snyder didn’t support the two-county concept. (March 27, 2018)
ELEVENTH UPDATE: A group of Detroit-area CEOs have come out with a plea to pass a plan, any plan. As discussed in Crain’s Detroit Business, (April 15, 2018) the execs are concerned with the image of Detroit with a poor regional transit system.
“The poor quality of our public transit is not lost on potential investors in our region. When Amazon passed on naming Detroit as a finalist for its second headquarters site, the lack of a workable regional transit system was one of a few key factors cited.”
Evidently the RTA Board is scheduled to meet on April 19 and is being entreated to put something on the ballot. But no particular plan is being endorsed. That doesn’t leave the board with much direction. The rules require that at least one of the appointees from all parties vote in favor of the item. Considering the objections coming from both Macomb and Oakland Counties, that will be a challenge.
TWELVETH UPDATE: At the RTA April 19 meeting, it was decided to move ahead with public comment on the Evans plan, now being called Connect Southeast Michigan. The advocacy is currently located on the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce site, which may give you a clue to the motivation. According to Crain’s Detroit, the RTA board may vote on whether to move this onto the ballot at their May meeting.
THIRTEENTH UPDATE: Not quite relevant to the RTA millage vote, but not very good news, was the failure of the QLine (M-1 streetcar line in Detroit) to achieve its ridership goals for the first year. As reported by Crain’s (May 2, 2018), the line was 500,000 riders below projections for the first year, despite a period of free ridership. The M-1 line was one of the major drivers for the formation of the RTA and received an upfront grant from USDOT upon the RTA legislation’s passage. It is a public-private partnership, with substantial private investment, but it was hoped that the RTA could take over its operation in the future.
FOURTEENTH UPDATE: A distracting theme has emerged with action at the State Legislature. According to a Gongwer report published in Crain’s Detroit Business (May 9, 2018), a bill (HB 5870) has been introduced to allow communities to opt out of any new transit millage. It appears to be mostly supported by Oakland County municipalities. This concept has caused the failure of past transit efforts in metro Detroit. Most likely at this point it is more an expression of resistance than a likely change in the state legislation.
FIFTEENTH UPDATE: The comments from Macomb and Oakland Counties continue to be negative to the RTA. In a press conference reported by MLive (May 28, 2018), the two County Executives emphasized their support for a renewal of the SMART millage and not for the RTA millage.
SIXTEENTH UPDATE: The purchase by Ford Motor Co. of the Michigan Central Station in Detroit’s Corktown has changed some of the tenor of transportation talk, with an emphasis on autonomous vehicles taking some of the energy. As reported in Crain’s Detroit Business, there is talk of making Michigan Avenue a test track for autonomous shuttles. (Ford’s intent is to make the station a headquarters for its autonomous vehicle development.) Meanwhile, the actual use of the station for trains is being dismissed with little more than a nod. But the Wayne-Washtenaw enthusiasts who want a commuter rail are still bringing up the idea. Unfortunately, Wayne County Executive Evans is still hoping for a 4-county RTA.
SEVENTEENTH UPDATE: The RTA board finally decided against placing the plan on the November ballot. According to Crains, it didn’t make it out of committee so we don’t know how the Board would have voted. Advocates are vowing to fight another day, maybe next year or the next. Meanwhile, both the SMART and AAATA system millages are up for renewal this year.
NINETEENTH UPDATE: The Citizen’s Research Council has produced a broad-ranging essay about regional transit across Michigan. (March 2019: Rethinking Regional Transportation in Michigan’s Urban Areas. ) It points to difficulties in governance and taxation, and suggests what for Michigan are revolutionary ideas, such as new forms of taxation separate from property taxes, and tax-base sharing and/or “feathering”, so that different areas pay different tax rates.
TWENTIETH UPDATE: MetroTimes is quite critical of the QLine (aka M-1), especially considering its overall effect on Detroit transit and the RTA. Subtitle: “A Streetcar Named Disaster“. (May 2019)
TWENTY-SECOND UPDATE: This analysis by a current member of the RTA Board (Chuck Moss, Oakland County) seems very astute. He knows where all the bodies are buried:”the future of regional transit has some serious structural potholes as big as the worst ones on Telegraph Road”. (September 2019)
TWENTY-THIRD UPDATE:A new strategm for attaining a millage vote without Macomb County’s participation has been devised. It would require revision of the existing Municipal Partnership Act by the State Legislature.(February 2020)
TWENTY-FIFTH UPDATE: A rapid sequence of proposed changes, including an abandonment of the MPA changes and a revision of the original RTA legislation, seems to have foundered and it is difficult to see how a new millage will make it to the ballot in 2020.
The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners had a big win on November 7. The somewhat controversial ballot issue for a combined mental health and public safety millage passed rather spectacularly. As related by the Ann Arbor News, it won by nearly a 2-1 margin.
We had complained a great deal about this ballot measure. As explained at length in Hair on Fire in Ann Arbor, the inclusion of a “rebate” to certain county communities seemed questionable, made the measure unnecessarily complicated, and added a layer of strangeness in that the Ann Arbor City Council promptly passed a measure announcing how they would spend the windfall.
We also noted in Taxes and the Local Government Quandary that a change in language at the last minute made this into a vehicle to distribute taxes on some municipalities to others. The purported reasoning behind the rebate was to acknowledge that municipalities who tax themselves for their own police forces were being taxed twice. The idea, then, would be to repay them according to their tax base (ad valorem). But this was altered to make the payment on the basis of population. According to the report in the Ann Arbor News, the device was invented by CM Chuck Warpehoski and Commissioner Conan Smith. The intent and effect was to transfer additional funds to the City of Ypsilanti, presumably in an effort to provide “equity”. (Ypsilanti is perennially revenue-short.)
My concern was that all this complication might cause the millage to fail at the ballot box. But that fear was not realized. The voters, at least those in the eastern more urbanized section of the County, endorsed it heartily. In spite of two groups opposing the millage, the win was more than its supporters had imagined. As quoted by the Ann Arbor News,
“Tonight, the people of Washtenaw County recognized the need to adequately fund mental health and public safety,” County Board Chairman Andy LaBarre, D-Ann Arbor, said in a statement after the results were reported.
Regional Issues
Distribution of votes for and against the millage proposal, as shown by Washtenaw County. Note that most townships in the western part of the County voted No.
But there are some regional implications in any County-wide vote. With their heavy voter numbers, the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township, can often carry a measure. This can create a classic urban-rural split, where the townships that don’t use services intensively may resist being taxed to provide them to others. As we noted earlier, many of these rural townships keep their own operating millages to a bare minimum. The fact that much of the land being taxed is agricultural probably adds an edge to this. If you are operating a business that requires tens or hundreds of acres, each tax increment is a direct hit on your livelihood.
There was another indication at the BOC meeting that there might be some regional strains. According to the Ann Arbor News, the vote was only 5-4 in favor to put this on the ballot. Evidently only the Ann Arbor commissioners, together with the representatives from Northfield and Pittsfield Townships (both are relatively urban and will receive a rebate), voted for it. Even the Ypsilanti commissioners did not support it, nor did the commissioners from the western townships.
This raises a common question in governance: is winning the question by majority rule the only consideration? When is it more important to accomplish a goal regardless of opposition by a substantial minority and when is it instead important to reach a consensus? Should we be concerned when such a geographical divide exists on a particular issue? Is it worthwhile to try to find an approach which will at least not lead to a revolt as this one has? These questions are at the heart of the question of what regional governance should mean. In my opinion, it is better to avoid cultivating a deep well of resentment between localities. It should never be a “I win, you lose”.
Legal Questions
From the beginning, there have been those who questioned the legality of this ballot measure.
Former County Commissioner Dan Smith circulated a message prior to the election with a number of reasons that the measure could fail a legal test (Smith is not an attorney). These are his points, verbatim.
Michigan law states that a millage proposal must state a “purpose,” which is something like constructing a new building or paying for police/fire protection. I don’t think that allocating funds to jurisdictions which maintain their own police force is a “purpose.”
Local government can only spend taxpayer funds on things which are authorized (or fairly implied) by state law. There is no provision for the county to simply give money to another municipality (or anyone else, for that matter).
The “refund provision” results in non-uniform taxation as those municipalities w/o a police department are paying a higher tax rate than those which get the refund; this also violates current interpretations of “equal protection” in both the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.
The refund provision also violates Article IX Section 6 of the Michigan constitution as those municipalities WITH a police department are experiencing a tax increase (the amount of the refund) without the qualified voters of JUST that municipality voting on it.
Similarly, this could be an end-run around Charter tax limits, Ypsilanti (and maybe others) is already levying the maximum under its charter.
To all who questioned these points, BOC Chair Andy LaBarre assured the public that the Corporation Counsel, Curtis Hedger, had not only reviewed the measure, but had consulted an expert in ballot language. (The Corporation Counsel advises the BOC and the County Administrator, but does not communicate directly with the public.)
We’ll See You in Court
The champagne bottles had barely made it to the recycling bin before the next step was announced. The news report from the WEMU radio station revealed that the question of legality has not been dropped.
WEMU interviewed Harley Rider, the Supervisor of Dexter Township, who announced that he would be part of a coalition who will challenge the ballot measure in court. When we reached Rider today, he stressed that he is joining what he expects to be a “bi-partisan” coalition as a private individual, not in his role as a township official. He says that there is not yet a formal, named group but it is obvious that the process is full of energy.
This is not the first time the County has been sued over a tax issue. While the matter was never completely resolved, a previous suit did not prevail. The County had levied a tax without a vote of the people in 2015 and 2016. As the Washtenaw County Road Commission notes, that tax made it possible to improve many county roads, but its legality was questionable. The BOC dropped that idea after they were sued and put an issue on the ballot in November 2016, when it passed handily. They were also moved to drop the “Act 88 millage” which was similarly imposed using a somewhat novel theory. (Ann Arbor News report) It seems that some commissioners just can’t quite leave alone venturing into deep waters as far as taxation is concerned.
NOTE: Of course, we do not know how any court case will be resolved, nor has an argument been set forth by the parties. This account is not intended to prejudge the result and it will likely be months before we know more. But it would have been desirable to avoid this conflict. The County needed a “win-win”.
UPDATE: Harley Rider responded (December 17, 2017) to an inquiry about progress on the lawsuit with a statement that was explicitly for quotation. “We are trying to schedule a meeting with an attorney shortly after the first of the year.”
SECOND UPDATE: (March 14, 2018): Some people are beginning to realize that Ann Arbor is not using the millage for mental health, as was supposed by many voters. As was reported by the Ann Arbor News, City Council got an earful from several commenters. The intention to bring a lawsuit by Harley Rider is also referenced.
Got vision? Our City Councilmembers do. But that takes money. Can we talk taxes?
Why do people run for office in local government? Various reasons, including personal (political) ambition, an enjoyment of politics as a practice (it has its obsessive qualities and you meet people), sometimes useful connections that might help you in your day job. But I believe that a common characteristic in budding politicians is that they want to DO SOMETHING. The aspirational impulse may go many directions. With me it was land use. (So, immediately, all the BOC of my day was able to deal with was homelessness.) We have local politicians who have emphasized economic development, transit, and development for population density. Lately, the attention has turned to economic equity and affordable (i.e., subsidized) housing, and now there is a strong interest rising in solar power as a method of attacking climate change.
The Michigan Difference
It is frustrating, from the viewpoint of a Michigan municipal official, to read about advances in other states. Here a transit program, there a measure to provide affordable housing, often paid for by a special sales tax, hotel tax, or even ticket surcharge (think UM football games) levied by a city or a county. Not here. There are only two ways a local government in Michigan can tax its residents and businesses. One is a tax on real property (real estate) and “personal property” which despite the confusing name is really business property. However, that tax is slowly being eliminated.
The other option (available only to cities) is a city income tax.According to the Ann Arbor News, the City Council is considering that again. If the Council decides to go ahead with this oft-considered option, they will have to put a charter amendment on the ballot. If the tax is enacted, it will mean that City residents will pay a 1% tax on income (this is rents and retail proceeds as well as wages) and non-residents will pay 0.5%. In return, property owners will not be obliged to pay the general operating millage (for FY2018, that is 6.0343 mills). Whether one comes off ahead on this personally depends on personal circumstances. (My best understanding is that retirement income is now taxable, so seniors are not as advantaged as in the past.) The advantage to the City, and perhaps to many taxpayers, is that we are able to tap the incomes of UM employees and others who live elsewhere and work or do business in Ann Arbor.
Because of limitations in the Michigan constitution, it is very difficult for local government to raise property taxes. We reviewed that in this post from 2011, which also walks you through details of when and how assessments for property tax are done. Because of the Headlee Amendment and some other constitutional restrictions, governments are limited as to the total millage they can impose and must go to a vote of the people (a ballot question) to raise a new millage. Tax expenditures become (by design) a zero-sum game. So local governments are always starved for revenue, especially if they are ambitious.
Invitation to a fundraiser that was posted to Facebook in July 2017
In the face of this frustration, some of our County Commissioners and City Councilmembers have gotten creative. As we described inHair on Fire in Ann Arbor, the BOC has established a millage ballot proposal that offers to give certain local governments a “rebate”, to be spent as wished. This has entered into Ann Arbor City Council politics, with the incumbents who sponsored the resolution that assigned these tax goodies to favored uses (pedestrian safety, affordable housing, and climate change) running for office as the “Sustainable Ann Arbor”, “Progressive” slate on the strength of that resolution. This device is obviously a response to frustration over the inability to use local tax dollars as they would like. But in my opinion, both the BOC and these Councilmembers are not just misusing the ballot initiative system, but are being insensitive to the way ordinary taxpayers view local taxes and how they are used. To be successful, they will have to persuade a majority of Washtenaw County voters that paying an additional 1.0 mill tax is to their benefit.
Taxes are Taxing
Ann Arbor homeowners are very conscious of our local tax system in July. This is the month the big property tax bill is due. To many of us, this is the make-or-break moment. Writing that check by the end of the month (and Ann Arbor has a very big stick to make sure that you do) is a big stress point. Of course, no one loves taxes, but this is your HOUSE. And every year, the total goes up.
Most of the property taxes we pay are for local government. Across the County, the actual rate and amount paid varies widely, especially because of overlapping school districts, library districts, transit authority district, and other authorities. The greatest difference is in the millage that each municipality imposes on its own behalf. That is the operating millage together with any special millages that voters have approved. These can be seen by referring to the Apportionment Report from the County Equalization Department. (All figures cited in this post are from County Equalization.) Washtenaw County is really the essential level of government in Michigan, because many programs based on Michigan and even Federal law are delegated to the County to enact (these are called mandated services). Taxpayers in all of our local units pay the same County millage (currently 6.2432).
Property taxes collected in Washtenaw County as shown in the Apportionment Report (2016). The smaller pie chart is County taxes and is detail of the pink wedge. Note that schools are the largest tax target. AAATA and DDAs are in the “local government” wedge.
Questions About Equity
There are several questions that occur to the taxpayer. One is, “what am I getting for this tax payment“? That depends. The general expectation for local taxes is that the tax is collected by government so that it can carry out the services we need. Washtenaw County has 27 cities, villages, and townships. Taxpayers in each of these may live in different school districts, library districts, etc. In some, voters have chosen a high-service, high-tax government. Many townships are run on a bare-bones model. So service levels differ, and so do local tax rates. City residents usually go with the high-cost option. When we want special services (parks, local buses, better roads, etc.) we vote in special millages. In some townships, it is very difficult to pass a library millage or an increase in the township general operating millage. Cities have a solid waste millage and provide trash pickup; most townships leave it up to the occupant to contract for trash removal. Cities typically have water utilities (sewer, drinking water). Townships mostly leave it up to occupants to have a well and a septic tank. There are exceptions; the more urban townships like Ypsilanti and Pittsfield contract with the Detroit water authority, and portions of Scio Township and Ann Arbor Township have contracts with the City of Ann Arbor. In general “you get what you pay for” is the rule. But to feel that you are taxed fairly, you want to see that you get the services you have opted for.
Is It Fair?
The wish to be treated fairly is baked into our bones. (Experiments with monkeys show they resent being treated less well than the next monkey; they’ll refuse to do the trick if the other monkey gets a grape and they only get a cucumber.) But part of that is your expectation of the “service” that you are buying. I want my trash picked up and my drinking water to be clean and readily available. I’m not fond of potholes either. But I also want to know that my community is being administered rationally and compassionately by officials who have the correct expertise. In the example of the County, I want to know that public health, environmental health, and mental health are all being tended to by people who know what they are doing, and public safety (policing and judicial system) is important to me even if I never get robbed or a ticket. So those are “services” I will happily purchase. I’ll vote for school taxes even though I never had children. But what really irritates me is if I do my part and others don’t. That is where we come down to the question of an even treatment of taxation.
Local Differences in Taxation
Because voters in local municipalities (that includes cities, villages, and townships) all choose different “packages” and also because the economic picture in each locality differs, there are major differences across the county in how much tax revenue is collected and what individual taxpayers have to pay. The fortunes of each government (and the burden on taxpayers) are determined by two different factors: the millage rate and the taxable value (properly called the ad-valorem) available. In order to keep local assessors from under-assessing the value of property, the County Equalization Department conducts a detailed study each year and publishes a complete snapshot of local government assessment and taxation. (All figures we cite here are from the Equalization Report or the Apportionment Report.) The fortunes of each government depend heavily on the ad-valorem (hence the constant attention to “tax base”).
Let’s stop right here and acknowledge that there are different kinds of taxpayers, including owners of agricultural, industrial, and commercial property. These are very important to a locality’s tax base but our discussion here focuses mostly on residential taxpayers. For the taxpayer, the assessed value (SEV) of their house is determined each year by the assessor (assumed to be half the market value), and the taxable value (TV) is determined by a complex formula (see Proposal A) that works to hold down TV for long-term property owners. For most, it is much lower than the SEV. The tax due is calculated in this way:
Some localities have such high-value property that they can afford to keep millage rates relatively low and still provide quality services. Others, with low real estate values, strain to cover all the bases with high millage rates. This creates a good deal of inequity on a social level across the county.
Tax profiles for three different municipalities. Local millages (including operating and special millages) are shown. Tax calculated on total homestead millage is for house of market value $200,000, assuming TV is exactly half that.
In this example, the owner of a new house of $200,000 market value (TV of $100,000) would pay a drastically different tax bill. Because it has such a low tax base, the City of Ypsilanti is taxing its residents at the very maximum that its charter allows. Because most real estate in Ypsilanti is often at a lower valuation, many may not pay that. However, this tax rate will obviously depress real estate value.
Back to the fairness question: presumably since each of us has chosen to live in a particular community (a free will theory of taxation), the tax assessed there is “fair”. But what about when the tax is being collected for services used by a different locality? As we explained in our post Regionalism Reconsidered, Michigan has a strong home-rule tradition and culture. When we pay County taxes, we are paying for a regional benefit. We must accept that services delivered to our entire region (county) are on our own behalf. But what few of us expect is that the County will collect taxes specifically to donate to a different municipality.
In the case of the proposed “mental health and public safety” millage, that was a decision made on the floor during debate on the ballot language. In the final language, a change was made so that the “rebate” to municipalities with their own police forces would be made proportionately on the basis of population, not on taxable value.
shall the limitations on the total amount of taxes which may be levied against taxable property within Washtenaw County, Michigan, as provided for by Section 6 of Article IX of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, be increased up to the amount of $1.00 per thousand dollars of taxable valuation (1.0 mills) for a period of eight years, beginning with the December 1, 2018 levy and extending through the 2025 levy, which shall raise in the first year an estimated $15,433,608.00 to be used as follows: 38% shall be allocated to Washtenaw County’s Community Mental Health Department for mental health crisis, stabilization and prevention, and to meet mental health needs in an appropriate setting, thus reducing the burden on the jail and improving care; 38% shall be allocated to the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office to ensure continued operations and increased collaboration with the mental health community; and 24% shall be allocated to jurisdictions in the County which maintain their own police force (currently Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, Saline, Ypsilanti, Pittsfield Township and Northfield Township) in proportion to their respective 2016 population values?
(The change was made in order to benefit the City of Ypsilanti.) This has the effect of redistributing County taxes from one municipality to another. As is seen in the table, most other cities and townships are essentially donating their own tax base (accepting the logic that this is a repayment for local taxes already collected) to others. For the complete calculations, refer to this spreadsheet.
“Rebate” in first year based on taxable value vs. population.
But the tax is also a redistribution from all the other municipalities in the County to these units receiving a rebate. Recall that the more rural townships have chosen to tax themselves at very low rates and then offer very minimal services. For example, Bridgewater Township has a local millage rate of 0.8233. Freedom Township is 0.9501. The proposed new County millage of 1.0 mills is higher than they choose to tax themselves for all services. And part of that tax is going to be redistributed to the urban communities. This may be why (as reported by the Ann Arbor News) the vote to approve the millage was 5-4, with the “out-county” commissioners voting against it.
There was some discussion that this redistribution in favor of the City of Ypsilanti was for “equity” and that small city does indeed have its problems, as shown with the tax situation. Perhaps we need to consider what “equity” means in distributing taxes among County communities, especially if the purpose is not truly regional in nature. Should the farmers of Bridgewater Township be paying for pedestrian safety in Ann Arbor? Should Saline and Chelsea be donating tax receipts to Ypsilanti and Northfield Township? The rebates are not going to individual taxpayers in those different jurisdictions, but rather to their elected bodies, to spend on whatever priorities they determine. Is that fair?
The Muddle
County voters have shown that they are willing to pay taxes for a truly regional service. For example, in November 2016, the County roads millage passed by 70.94% and the millage to support indigent veterans passed by 73.18%. But because of this muddle, it will be hard to make the case that this is truly a regional service for parts of the County. Perhaps the votes in the urbanized parts of the County will be enough to pull it off. But I wish that the BOC had offered us a clean choice with two pared-down millages, one for mental health services and one for the Sheriff. It should have been possible to make a good regional case for each of those. This was a bad time to introduce political aims into the process.
Just to confuse things further, should the Ann Arbor City Council decide to place a ballot issue for a city income tax on the November ballot, Ann Arbor voters will be making two different decisions about their tax futures at the same time. Wonder how that will work out?
UPDATE: The Ann Arbor News has anarticle about the city income tax that compares the UM position (not our business) with that of MSU re an East Lansing income tax (oppose it, offering a buyout). According to the article, there will be a special work session of the City Council on September 11 to discuss the tax.
General note: I believe that it is probably too late to place a ballot item onto the November ballot. (I am having difficulty in finding the due dates for a charter amendment to be placed on the ballot by the Council.) That would indicate that the next opportunity for an election would be May 2018. After that, August or November 2018. There are potential political consequences for all these choices.
SECOND UPDATE: The City Council has now had a working session to discuss the possibility of a city income tax. Here is the account by the Ann Arbor News. Note that any appearance of this issue on the ballot will not be until after another study has been done, possibly November 2018. The slide show for council had some eye-opening figures, in the slide showing future capital needs. (The Treeline project is said to begin at a floor of $55 million.)
This thread began with the startling announcement on Mary Morgan’s Facebook page about a letter she had written to the Board of Commissioners about (Commissioner) Conan Smith’s application to the open position of County Director of the Office of Community and Economic Development. In the letter, she pointed to a substantial conflict of interest when a sitting commissioner applies for a county position. Smith soon resigned his seat, but retained his place on the November ballot. We discussed those implications at some length. Now the BOC has moved with some alacrity to resolve part of the tangle, by setting a firm schedule for choosing a County Administrator.
But as we pointed out in our previous post, this leaves a big piece of what one might term the “County leadership puzzle” yet to be resolved: the OCED post to which Smith applied. Now we know even more of that picture, especially regarding Conan Smith’s trajectory to this point, thanks to the continuing journalistic inquiries by Dave Askins (late of the Ann Arbor Chronicle). Dave now publishes via Twitter (do consider following him – the jokes are good too) and posts documents in Dropbox. Most recently, he obtained a number of key documents by FOIA to Washtenaw County and the City of Southfield. (Southfield is one of the cities represented on the Board of Metro Matters/Michigan Suburb Alliance.) It is evident from them that this story has gone from high drama to outright melodrama.
Conan Smith in Large Outline
I have been observing Conan Smith (or just “Conan” – as everyone calls him) ever since he ran a primary against me in 2002 for the County Commissioner seat I occupied at the time. I defeated him handily but chose not to run in 2004. He won in a three-way primary and has occupied that seat ever since. Here are the things I know about him.
Official BOC portrait of Conan Smith. Date not known.
(1) He is very deeply affected by his family history and frequently cites it as his motivation and also as a reason why he should be supported politically. His grandfather was Al Wheeler, who is a civil rights icon in Ann Arbor. He was the first and only Black mayor and Wheeler Park near Kerrytown is named in his honor. Conan’s mother, Alma Wheeler Smith, has served in many elected and appointed offices, and is well known and well respected in Washtenaw County. His aunt, Nancy Wheeler (known for most years as Nancy Francis) was a much beloved, though sometimes controversial, juvenile court judge.
Conan Smith image used in social media
(2) He is a committed regionalist. In 2002, he joined the fledgling Michigan Suburbs Alliance (MSA) as its Executive Director. This was a nonprofit that allied the suburbs surrounding Detroit for mutual benefit. In 2010, as that history describes, the organization began rethinking its relationship to the City of Detroit (which has, notably, been undergoing a renascence) and has been rebranding to Metro Matters. Conan has employed all of his resources, including his role as a County Commissioner (and Chair of that BOC), connections through the MSA, and his wife (Senator Rebekah Warren), to bring about the Regional Transit Authority. (Here is a post with some historical information about the genesis of the RTA.) Originally, the RTA was intended to include only the three metropolitan Detroit counties (Oakland, Wayne, Macomb) and the City of Detroit. With Senator Warren’s assistance, Washtenaw County (where Conan had an important seat) was added. The Metro Matters website celebrates the RTA as one of its signature accomplishments. Quite recently, Metromode online magazine (a collaborator) highlighted Conan and his regional vision. In that article, Conan proposes a similar tax-sharing program to one used in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) area, where a new tax base in one municipality generates new taxes for use by other municipalities. This will be a very tough sell in Michigan, where border controls on tax redistribution are set into our constitution.
Conan Smith at BOC May 7, 2014 (Ann Arbor Chronicle photo)
(3) He is confident in his vision and in his judgment. Sometimes this can lead to impetuous statements. In addition, he often dismisses the need to satisfy other parties or reach a consensus if the raw exercise of power can be used instead. Here is just one example, from 2014, where the BOC was considering whether to place a tax for roads before the public or to use an obscure pre-Headlee law simply to impose a tax on Washtenaw County citizens, including his own constituents. (From the Ann Arbor Chronicle archives.) (In the end, the tax was simply imposed.)
Another notable example was Conan’s push for Act 88 taxation. As related by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, he was the instigator to have this tax administered by OCED, and he caused the rate to be increased to homeowners. The tax has funded mostly economic development projects, especially Ann Arbor SPARK. This was another example of a practice by the BOC in recent years to impose taxes without a public vote. That practice has now been challenged in court (someone did decide to sue). This week the BOC will likely act to cease collecting the tax. The memo from the Interim Administrator lays out the circumstances fully.
And Then One Day It All Came Apart
The position with Michigan Suburbs Alliance seemed to be secure. It was formalized in 2003 as a coalition of Detroit-area suburbs, to solve suburban problems. But as time passed, it also seemed to be passing MSA by. With the resurgence of the City of Detroit, all the glamour and excitement became invested in the big city. Conan Smith posted an announcement in February 2015 that the organization would be renamed “Metro Matters”.
Portrait on the staff roster for Metro Matters
A major impetus for this was evidently Smith’s hard work putting the RTA together. “We sat at the table to write the legislation that established the RTA, an historic achievement that brings us closer to bridging the city/suburb divide. ” His announcement points out the success in getting the M1-rail project (now known as QLine) together. But that is a central Detroit project, sponsored by Detroit business interests. The Board of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance is made up of suburban officers, and the suburbs have been the major source of funds for the organization.
We don’t have the financial records to explain what happened, but Conan gave a decent explanation to his Board in December 2015, via a memo.
…over the past several months in particular, we have failed to generate the financial support necessary to sustain the operations of the organization at the high level we anticipated. As you can see from our most recent financial statements, our overall position is strong but the statement of cash flows shows us spending far more than we are taking in.
A poignant indicator was that the December Christmas party was cancelled within hours of its scheduled time. (A reminder had gone out that same day.) This is well explained with the continuation of that Board memo:
What this means directly is the laying off of our staff throughout the month of January and the closure of our physical office. I will continue to work on behalf of the organization to get a stronger funding base underneath us, and Rick Bunch will continue to lead the Energy Office, which has strong prospects coming off a major victory at MPSC. Hayley Roberts and Ellen Vial will be retained on a small contract basis to see through two of our grant-funded projects. The balance of the staff’s positions will likely be eliminated.
By March of this year (2016), it is evident that the Board is not happy. Steve Duchane, city manager of Eastpointe, was fairly explicit:
The reformation of what was once a collaboration of the inner ring suburbs and then in my opinion worth the time as a municipal official to participate in has been a smoke and mirrors grad project for a long time. When we actually did represent the common shared interests of the metro area suburbs we were a vehicle of advancement and a leader in efficient suburban government, interests and needs that exist today that is not served.
Emails from Conan through March are an attempt to explain matters to his Board. Evidently they had demanded more direct oversight of the finances of the organization. There is also one sorrowful email from a vendor who had not been paid. It is also made clear that by this time Conan and his chief deputy have been serving without paychecks, and she (Hayley Roberts) was evidently leaving to a paying position.
The County Presents an Alternative
In the context of all this, the option presented by the OCED department director position (posted August 1, 2016) must have seemed like a godsend. Conan sent a letter of application dated August 11, 2016. He must have talked to someone before sending it, because Mary Morgan sent her indignant letter to the full BOC as of August 15. Conan announced that he was resigning his seat (but not his place on the ballot) on August 16. Conan communicated with his Board on August 17 that he would be applying and “If I am chosen, I will need to give my notice to Metro Matters.”
Things moved rather precipitously. Edward Klobucher, City Manager of Hazel Park and the Chair of the Board, scheduled a Board meeting (to which Conan was not invited) for August 26. “We will discuss the current situation with Metro Matters and hopefully chart a new course for the future.” Klobucher met with Conan on August 30 to inform him that he was suspended and required to turn over all materials. The last email available from Dave Askins’ FOIA indicated that the Board’s attorney (Brandon Fournier) had met with Conan’s attorney (David Blanchard) and they were discussing a separation agreement, with no comment for the media.
A Question of Leadership Style
As we reviewed in the previous post, there are two leadership styles that an administrator may adopt. One is to make the mechanism run smoothly and see that everyone in the organization functions well and happily. The other is to be the Big Picture, Big Ideas person, who seeks new frontiers and incidentally a certain place in the limelight. There are, of course, overlaps; Big Picture people may run a perfectly good organization and good managers also have new ideas. But the style will influence the direction of the organization profoundly. It is clear, if not already from his history, then from his letter of application, that Conan Smith is the Big Picture – Big Ideas man. The header of one important paragraph is Strategic Leadership to Achieve Big Goals. The entire letter (except for the first three paragraphs, which are about his family history) fairly sparkles with his ambition and wish to grasp the department and even the entire County by the shoulders to rush up that mountain. He also touts his extensive connections within the community. Clearly he sees himself as a major player in the County and in the region. It could be a very large presence for a new County Administrator to share space with. I hope that the Board of Commissioners has the wisdom (and the votes!) to pass the resolution on next week’s agenda that will ask the Interim Administrator to hold off filling the position till a new Administrator can be named.
NOTE: I did not include a link to the email texts that Dave Askins obtained by FOIA. These are contained in Dropbox files and are somewhat difficult to read (they are text files, in Notepad). Because of some comments, it seems that I need to provide substantiation for the statements that are based on these files. This pdf has hyperlinks to the files, and also a summary of their content.
UPDATE: Mary Morgan will be publishing a follow-up to her previous letter in The Ann. Presumably this link is to the article in the upcoming print edition. (I have not received my copy, which is usually distributed in the New York Times, yet.) She includes more inside information about the Conan Smith machinations and the County OCED position. She also has some very apposite opinion points to make.
SECOND UPDATE: Today (October 12, 2016) Conan Smith notified officials at Washtenaw County that he was withdrawing his application to the OCED position. As has been the case throughout this story, the former Chronicle personnel broke the story.
THIRD UPDATE: Now the “official” version (Ann Arbor News, October 13, 2016). Note that it states that there is only one other person under consideration for the post.
FOURTH UPDATE: A new article, Ann Arbor News, October 17, 2016, includes an interview with the Chair of the BOC re the tangle surrounding the OCED position.
Much of the current confusion on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners comes down to this: they are attempting to resolve what the future direction of the County is, and what type of leadership should be on board to take it there.
As we have remarked, the BOC failed to choose between two top candidates for County Administrator, and terminated the process in April 2016. The resolution to do this has a useful description of the quandary the BOC found themselves in. They had a “leadership assessment” done for each of their two top candidates, and then failed to reach a consensus among themselves as to which “style” was right for the County. There was no indication that both candidates did not have the requisite experience and qualifications. Rather, it had to do with the character of leadership each would bring to the position.
The resolution also includes a significant bit of history: the BOC first “spent a number of months looking at the various types of County government to insure that an appointed County Administrator was the best type of government for the citizens of Washtenaw County”. In other words, whether to continue with the current structure in which an Administrator is hired by the BOC and answers to them; or an elected Executive who answers only to the voters county-wide. (Washtenaw County has several top administrators who are elected county-wide, including the Treasurer, the Sheriff, the Prosecutor, and the Water Resources manager.) Only a few counties in Michigan have an elected County Executive. This has most often resulted in a near fiefdom and often the BOC has relatively little influence on policy. L. Brooks Patterson, the CE of Oakland County, is the most notorious example. Most other Michigan counties have the same structure as Washtenaw. Evidently the BOC decided to stay with the current structure.
So what would be the factors that might enter into the “leadership” question? There are two choices:
Should our County government concentrate on fulfilling its obligations (the county has a mandate to provide most state- and Federal- directed and funded programs) and providing services to its residents and taxpayers?, or
Should the direction be to make the County Be Something – a more muscular approach in which the County sets a regional direction, initiates new programs, is the leader among local governments, gets noticed regionally, statewide or even nationally for innovation and economic success?
The leadership style of the executive is crucial to these two very different visions of what the county should be. Do you want a good administrator who keeps the mechanism running smoothly, or a “big picture” person who is restless if not pursuing new ambitions and garnering new influence, new achievements, new visibility for the county and him/herself? Often the second version opens up opportunities for others and can contribute to growth and economic development. But such leadership can be ruthless in where priorities are assigned, and it is often not to simple service delivery.
The decision looms
If the BOC is trying to choose between those two styles of leadership, no obvious choice for the aggressive leader jumps out from their four top candidates. Those are Bob Tetens, the current head of Parks and Recreation; Muddasar Tawakkul, Director of compliance and purchasing for the Detroit/Wayne County Mental Health Authority; Gregory Dill, the current Interim Administrator; and James Palenick, currently Director of economic & business development for Fayetteville, NC. All of them have solid administrative credentials. Tetens has a planning background and was previously the director of WATS (the body that oversees transportation planning for Washtenaw County). He has been a well-respected top administrator at the County for well over a decade and can be expected to have a breadth of understanding of County government. Dill has been in a variety of County administrative positions, including with the Sheriff’s department, and at one time was in charge of building programs in the County. Tawakkul is an attorney and has had a number of high-power assignments; his technical knowledge is evidently impressive. Palenick has a long varied resume from many locations (he has moved around a lot) but at one time long ago was the Dexter Village manager. It is difficult to see why any of them should be the “visionary” type of manager, though Palenick hints that he views himself that way; “I sincerely believe that I can bring the kind of innovative and strategic leadership that Washtenaw County needs and demands at this time in its organizational evolution”.
As we have detailed, the process is now on fast track and a decision will be made on October 19.
Another piece of the puzzle
But another factor in County leadership is still pending. That is the opening for the Director of the Office of Community and Economic Development. As described in the last two posts, the conclusion of that search is still pending. The question was partly whether Greg Dill, as the Interim Administrator, would choose to fill it before a final decision on the County Administrator.
The OCED position is one of the most powerful of the appointed department chairs. It is the result of combining three former departments and administers a great many Federally funded programs. Its previous director, Mary Jo Callan, exerted a great deal of leadership and caused the County to conduct a major study of inequality (of income, housing, circumstance) in the county which has been used as a basis for new policies. The director of this department, if appointed prior to the hiring of a permanent administrator, could compete with a new administrator in setting directions.
Conan Smith’s application for this position has brought the decision into high focus, as already described, partly because he was a sitting Commissioner. Smith has been influential on the BOC in the past; he has been Chair in a couple of terms. Now he has resigned his seat – but may be re-elected come November! and meanwhile, it is evident that he has also lost his long-time (well-paid) position as the executive director of a nonprofit organization (Michigan Suburbs Alliance). All of this is happening in the mix of decisions to be made about the direction of the County as determined by choice of its chief Administrator. More detail on this melodrama in the next post.
With a May millage vote scheduled, the question of whether Ann Arbor and its immediate neighbors really want an expanded transit system should finally be resolved.
At last the board of the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority have voted (after a good deal of hesitation) to put a measure on the ballot which will ask the public to endorse their vision of an expanded transit system. The board of (then) AATA had a “straw vote” (nonbinding) in May 2008 to become a regional authority, rather than one centered in Ann Arbor. In November 2009, the board t00k a formal vote to move toward becoming a countywide system and began calling in the experts to figure out how. That effort was an embarrassing failure, as we have documented in our Topsy Turvy Transit series. In a recovery move, AATA launched a campaign to establish a smaller Urban Core regional authority. They encountered some of the same barriers (regional and township politics, limitations of the Michigan governance system) and were not able to persuade even all of this smaller number of targeted municipalities to join them.
The limits of the expanded authority. Pittsfield and Saline are not authority members.
In the end, only the City of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township have joined the newly named AAATA. (As this formal description of the service plan indicates, Pittsfield Township and the City of Saline remain active participants in talks and have service scheduled, hypothetically to be paid for by Purchase of Service Agreements, or POSAs.) Thus, the millage vote set for May 6 will be held only in the City of Ann Arbor, the City of Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township. Voters in all three municipalities will be asked to vote for this: The campaign has already begun. AAATA, as a public body, is not legally entitled to campaign for passage of the millage, but has an “information” page that pushes beyond simple facts into persuasive language. A campaign by a coalition supporting the millage called “More Buses” is already soliciting contributions (it is largely fueled by Partners for Transit via the Ecology Center). And now an opposition group is registered as Better Transit Now (their website is not yet active). The Ann Arbor News has covered the contest with quotes from the participants.
Regardless of the outcome, this ballot issue should help to resolve the direction that AAATA will take in the future. If the millage passes, the organization will likely continue to seek expanded regional initiatives (already they are contemplating additional “express” buses, including one to Belleville). If the ballot fails, it should at the minimum be a moment for some serious soul-searching.
UPDATE: The Ann Arbor Chronicle now has an article describing the AAATA meeting at which the vote establishing the ballot issue was taken.
SECOND UPDATE: On his blog, Mark Maynard discusses the transit millage with some of its proponents. They have few kind words to say about the opponents. Martha Valadez, who is described as the field organizer for More Buses (she works for the Ecology Center), says this about the measure’s opponents:
They just refuse the truth and, instead, produce false information, stirring up fear.
Unfortunately, Valadez herself is given to careless use of the facts and overstatements of her position. An example:
People involved in this anti-millage campaign complain that Ann Arbor is subsidizing services for Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. This just isn’t true. Each individual community would, under this newly proposed plan, be paying for the services they would receive in the five-year plan.
Actually, the City of Ypsilanti is even now being subsidized by taxpayers in the City of Ann Arbor. The millage currently being collected from Ypsi City no longer is adequate to pay for their basic service, let alone the expanded service currently being provided. The additional revenue from the 0.7 mills in the ballot measure would only be about $202, 700, which might just pay for current service but not much more. What Ypsilanti Township expects to do is to move its current POSA costs to the millage collected by the authority. Strictly speaking, Ypsi Township will not be paying anything at all as a community. While Ypsi City’s taxpayers will continue to pay their current millage of just under 1 mill in addition to the new millage, Ypsi Township will simply offload its current general fund expenditure onto the new millage, and then ask for more service. Here is the final text of the Ypsilanti Township funding agreement with the AAATA.
Fortunately, Maynard also includes policy wonk Richard Murphy (“Murph”), who makes a number of useful observations about route planning (hub-and-spoke emerging into a “spiderweb”).
Interestingly, Maynard’s guests draw comparisons to the failed AADL bond issue, saying that “the same people” are behind the opposition to the transit issue. Actually, the only person that the two campaigns really have in common is Kathy Griswold. But it sounds better to make the opposition into a tax-hating cabal.
THIRD UPDATE: The history of the campaign against the AADL bond measure, which was on the November 6, 2012 ballot, seems to have become relevant to this transit millage issue. Here is a report by the Ann Arbor Chronicle listing the three campaign committees that formed to oppose the measure. They were Love Our Library (Sheila Rice, treasurer), Save the Ann Arbor Library (Douglas Jewett, treasurer) and Protect Our Libraries (Kathy Griswold, treasurer). Protect Our Libraries was probably the most muscular effort. Here is a contemporaneous story about the campaign that shows some of the advertising.
The committee supporting the bond measure, Our New Library, led by Ellie Serras, had a stellar list of endorsers and raised over $71,000, with in-kind contributions of just under $10,000. In contrast, Protect Our Libraries raised less than $3,000 in cash and had an in-kind contribution by an advertising agency of about $33,000. (Much of the campaign was run on its treasurer’s credit card.) (Libby Hunter, the treasurer for Better Transit Now, informs me that she was also part of the Protect Our Libraries campaign. I don’t know in what capacity. Both she and Lou Glorie contributed modest amounts to the campaign.)
The measure was defeated rather decisively (55.17% No, vs. 44.83% Yes). (Here is the report by the Ann Arbor Chronicle.) It wasn’t supposed to happen. All the right people and the big money got behind the AADL bond and expansion. Now that the transit millage campaign is being promoted in a similar way – lots of support from organizations and community leaders, confident media campaign, a puppy-love kind of subject (though buses perhaps less cuddly than libraries) – there seems to be some concern that an upstart group could once again deal a killing blow.
My take is that the library campaign was less the issue than that the community just didn’t buy it, or at least not enough voters did. I think this millage vote is likely to rest on just such a question: is this what we want for our community? The discussion won’t be over for some weeks.
FOURTH UPDATE: The AAATA has now published a “report” that is a further marketing piece for the millage. It has a number of “facts” that will need to be examined closely. Some of them come from older general reports (state or national). As an example, it claims that there will be a 15% reduction in drunk driving for each additional hour of evening service. This “fact” references a Cornell University study conducted in 2008 that examined the effect in the Washington D.C. area of service via the Metro. A preliminary draft of the study shows some meticulous protocols and data-gathering. For example, the estimates of the amount of drunk driving are based in part on DUI arrests. They also study the effect of placement of bars vs. Metro stations, and identify at which bar a particular DUI originated. As you might expect, a location effect exists. Bars located more than a 5 minute walk from Metro stations showed less reduction in DUIs than those located within a 5 minute walk.
Now, intuitively, if public transit is available and drunks are either smart enough or encouraged by friends to take transit, it will indeed cut drunken driving. But what kind of numbers are we likely to see in a highly dispersed rural area? What is the location of most bars in regard to transit stops? Where are our drunks coming from? (Let’s just exclude all our campus drinkers from the question – many of them presumably walk home.) I don’t think a census has been performed, thus this is not a “fact” as far as the Ann Arbor area goes, just a nicely intuitive suggestion.
I’m sorry to say that this approach to data and presentation of facts seems to be rather typical of the AAATA’s marketing approach. It shouldn’t be necessary to get down in the weeds and check every number, but I guess it will have to be done.
FIFTH UPDATE: The Ann Arbor News has published a twin set of reports on the transit millage. The first describes the objections that Ted Annis, a former treasurer for the AATA, has about the millage. This article refers to a number of datasets about AAATA budgets and performance. The second is primarily about salaries paid to AAATA officials.
Part of the interest in the two articles are the comments. While some of them are the usual trolls, there is some serious discussion about such issues as efficiency, fares, the University of Michigan’s arrangements with the AAATA, and resistance to additional taxes.
SIXTH UPDATE: The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s report on a Board of Commissioners meeting where a discussion of the transit millage was held brings up an interesting point: to what extent will the millage solidify the income separation of Ann Arbor from the two Ypsilanti communities? Yousef Rabhi is quoted as saying that he endorses the millage but not the idea that Ann Arbor should thus give up its accessibility to housing based on income. “Rabhi said he wanted to make it clear that his support for the transit millage does not mean he supports using public transit to divide the community based on socioeconomic levels.”
SEVENTH UPDATE: The question has been answered. The Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti communities voted “yes” to an additional transit tax, with an authoritative majority of over 70%. Some numbers here in the report by the Ann Arbor Chronicle. “The tax received clear majority support in all jurisdictions: Ann Arbor (71.4%); the city of Ypsilanti (83.4%); and Ypsilanti Township (61.6%).”
The AAATA can now place the orders for those buses. The July tax bill will include the new millage and preliminary plans for implementation begin as soon as August. The 5-year plan is detailed on the AAATA website.
Some elements of the plan require assent by communities not in the Authority, notably Pittsfield Township and Saline, to contract with AAATA for increased service. That will bear watching.
EIGHTH UPDATE: According to a report in the Ann Arbor News, Pittsfield Township has now (as of late October 2014) agreed to an expanded POSA that will increase bus service to the township. I have not reviewed it to determine whether this will provide the full extent of service envisioned in the Urban Core plan.
Partners for Transit cartogram showing population (click for larger)
The idea was to put together a smaller, tighter version of the countywide plan to serve only the relatively urbanized communities surrounding Ann Arbor. This matches the population profile of the county and makes sense, as mass transit does require some masses. They had some measure of success. They have now succeeded in expanding the authority to include the City of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. Other communities continue to be reserved about jumping in to a membership that includes being vulnerable to a future millage tax. Still, the newly christened Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority plans to include Pittsfield Township and perhaps the city of Saline and village of Dexter via longer-term POSA contracts.
With that in hand, the AAATA has been involved in a major public engagement campaign for the new, reconfigured 5-year plan. Our post Moving Us Forward: The Urban Core Expansion Plan explains that in some detail.
Now the AAATA has refined their plan, following public input. Tonight (January 16, 2014) the Board will be asked to approve the revised 5-year plan (formally the Five-Year Transit Improvement Program) “for implementation when local funding is secured”. The plan has a roughly $5.47 million funding gap. That is what is supposed to be filled by an authority-wide (Ann Arbor, City of Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township) millage. There is also a fairly hefty expectation of additional POSA funds. (Click the figure for larger view.) Note that the expected millage amount is still 0.7 mills, as has been estimated for months.
Estimated funding gap calculations from AAATA resolution
Who moved my millage?
But what is missing from tonight’s agenda is an approval of a millage ballot measure. Partners for Transit, an organization formed originally to promote a countywide transit organization, today put out a public statement calling for AAATA to authorize a millage measure.
Partners for Transit, a coalition of business and community leaders, religious groups, social service organizations, and environmental organizations today called on the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority to propose a new millage to advance the AAATA’s five year plan for improving public transportation in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, and the neighboring region.
The account on the Ann Arbor News mentions that “AAATA officials have been talking about putting a 0.7-mill tax on the ballot in May to fund the expanded services in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township”, and doubtless PFT assumed that this vote is on tonight’s agenda. But it isn’t. Further, there is no mention of this issue in the minutes of the Planning and Development Committee, where agenda items are usually discussed.
Now, this is very peculiar. We’ve been hearing for months about a likely May millage vote, and it is already being debated by the public. Indeed, I spoke at public comment to the PDC two months ago and urged them to go ahead and schedule the vote. But apparently, AAATA administration and Board are still weighing their options.
The May ballot made sense for an important reason: the property tax collection schedule. Local property taxes are collected in July. A millage on the May ballot would mean that money would start rolling in for an August implementation, and indeed schedules presented at the fall workshops seemed to factor in that expectation. A millage passed either at the August primary or the November general election would not be available until July 2015. This would put off implementation by a full year.
There was some urgency in getting the matter voted on by the AAATA Board. There are statutory deadlines for putting measures on the ballot. Two steps, first informing (by “petition”) the local clerks, then getting the final language to them for the ballot. Here are the deadlines for this year.
Note that unless AAATA holds a special board meeting, they will already be too late for a May election. Further, if they want to put something on the August ballot, they’ll have to act by April.
This was an error and the table has been replaced with one showing correct dates. The “petition” step does not apply to ballot measures placed by a governing board, but rather to petitions which require collection of signatures. In each case, the Board meeting for a month in which action is necessary does precede the deadline in that month.
Why the holdup? We can only speculate. There is always a strategy involved in getting a ballot measure passed. We don’t know what the fine details of all the surveys that they have been conducting. Has there been some uncertainty about public acceptance? Any tax issue is always controversial. But positive survey results are not necessarily a guarantee.
The later elections this year seem to be problematic for a couple of reasons. One is the possibility (probably remote) that the Southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority might also place a transit millage on the ballot. This seems not very likely reading between the lines of the Detroit News report of the RTA’s recent meeting. They have had some setbacks, including a lack of support from the State Legislature and the loss of their selected candidate for CEO, John Hertel. But the Chair of the RTA board, Paul Hillegonds, is quoted as saying that they have enough funds to get along for a while (mostly just to pay staff, not to undertake any initiatives).
Even more troubling might be the chaotic nature of current Ann Arbor politics. With John Hieftje’s departure from his mayoral chair, the music has been getting downright frenetic, with four council members running for mayor and three new council candidates for vacated seats (partial summary here). The months of June and July are likely to be steamy regardless of the weather. The November election looks calmer in the city, but it is a gubernatorial election and there will be plenty of action at the polls for statewide seats. Based on the November election of 2012, Ann Arbor is likely to contribute about 64% of the voters to an AAATA-wide election. (The City of Ypsilanti is about 7%, Ypsilanti Township 28%.) So the political mood in Ann Arbor could be important to the AAATA. In addition, it is always the mix of voters for a particular election that matters. Is a bigger turnout more or less favorable? Typically there are many more voters, often less informed, in the November elections. For a millage vote, it might be better to try to turn out favorable voters in a smaller election.
A timely report on tonight’s (January) board meeting from the Ann Arbor Chronicle provides one possible reason for the delay; a May ballot will incur more costs (because they’d have to pay for the election) than later. With all the money spent to date, it seems it might have been worth it.
UPDATE: AAATA has already issued a press release regarding the Board’s approval of the plan. Here is what they say about a millage:
AAATA officials say they are considering a recommendation that calls for the TheRide Board to approve placing a 0.7-mill, five-year property tax increase proposal on the 2014 ballot for residents in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. The date of a potential election is still to be determined pending the outcome of the AAATA Board’s decision.
SECOND UPDATE: In a follow-up article on Ann Arbor News AAATA Board Chair Charles Griffiths describes the potential benefits of the plan for “this year”, apparently without understanding that a deadline for the May ballot is about to pass without his board’s action.
THIRD UPDATE: I’ve been informed that I am misinterpreting the ballot deadlines. The petition deadline applies to measures for which signatures must be collected. (See corrections in the body of the text.) The relevant deadline for a May ballot is February 25, for ballot language. So it looks as though they can still make it. But why the delay in approving it?
FOURTH UPDATE: Here is a report from ModeShift of the latest RTA meeting in which there was discussion of both an RTA millage and possible conflicts with provider millages (including AAATA) .
FIFTH UPDATE: The Ann Arbor Chronicle has produced a comprehensive summary of the January 16 AAATA meeting, in head-spinning time.
SIXTH UPDATE: At their Planning and Development Committee meeting of February 11, 2014, AAATA board members sent forth a resolution to place a measure calling for an authority-wide millage of 0.7 mills on the May 2014 ballot. This is likely to sail through the February 20 board meeting without a hitch, in time to be submitted before the deadline.
This is a boon to Council and Mayoral candidates, who are now relieved from being asked questions about their position on this measure prior to the August primary.
SEVENTH UPDATE: As predicted, the AAATA board voted unanimously to place the millage on the May ballot, after some carefully staged political theater (many speakers were present to urge them on). Excellent coverage by the Ann Arbor Chronicle has the details.
In our first post in this series, we noted the importance of the concept of regionalism in current political discourse. But we also noted that there has been little discussion of the impact of regionalism on “the overall health and long-term development of communities, in other words, to the public good.”
First, what is a region? It is a general term, of course, but there have been a number of attempts to define our region. Here is an overview.
Let’s Make a Plan
Broadly speaking, in its simplest formulation regionalism is practised by information sharing and coordinated planning across jurisdictional boundaries. In Southeast Michigan, the regional planning agency has since 1968 been SEMCOG (the SouthEast Michigan Council of Governments). This is the designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw, and Wayne Counties.
As their website explains, SEMCOG is the contact point for many governmental programs, including regional transportation planning under MAP-21 (Federal trust fund), air and water pollution under those Federal acts, housing and land use under Housing and Urban Development (Federal) and many other Federal planning projects under MFPRS.
SEMCOG is also known for its data collection and summarization of items such as census figures, and its projections of population, job growth, etc. These are sometimes taken as predictions, a mistake. (It would be entertaining but time-consuming to go back 20 years and track how closely these projections have been made real over time.) On the basis of all these data and projections, they consider trends and how to address them in their work program.
SEMCOG doesn’t implement or do. SEMCOG facilitates discussion and makes plans. Here is what the site says about how they operate (emphasis is mine):
All SEMCOG policy decisions are made by local elected leaders, ensuring that regional policies reflect the interests of member communities. Participants serve on one or both of the policy-making bodies — the General Assembly and the Executive Committee. These bodies act on recommendations developed through SEMCOG’s various engagement methods. We engage regional stakeholders from local governments, the business community, and other special-interest and citizen groups.
The significance of that statement is that all parties are equally represented. That is a governance model that is very easily understood.
Regional Transit Coordination
The Regional Transit Authority, formed as a result of state legislation, involves just four counties, all of which are also part of SEMCOG. As we noted early on, there was some degree of fuss about how representatives were to be allocated to four counties and the City of Detroit, but after some down-to-the-wire legislative high-jinks last December, it materialized as a reality. The authority is temporarily housed on the SEMCOG website, where meeting notices are to be found. (Evidently, minutes are not yet being made public.)
Information on the RTA is only sketchily available. It will, according to its legislative mandate, coordinate the transit agencies within its borders (currently, DDOT, SMART, and AAATA). In the future it may also create some regional high-capacity transit corridors. According to an account by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the RTA is still looking for a source of operating funds. It is working with a small grant from MDOT and a minimal appropriation from the original legislation. One possibility was use of local bus operating funds, which would have reduced the ability of local transit agencies to provide transit. That has now been excluded by agreement. The authority could place a millage on the ballot for all four counties next year, or could attempt to impose a special vehicle license fee, which would also require a majority vote across the four-county area. (No opting-out by individual counties is possible.)
Good for Business
One of the drivers for regional planning has been to enhance the opportunities for economic development.
An early attempt at a regional economic entity in Washtenaw County was the A2Success venture. This was an initiative of the Board of Commissioners and took the “suits around a table” approach. In October 2007 a number of community leaders were assembled to launch a county-wide effort to boost regionalism in several areas, including education, transportation, business marketing and incubators, and human services. (One of the participants was a guy named Rick Snyder, a local entrepreneur.) They formed “action teams”. Several projects were launched and took on their own identities. One was ReImagine Washtenaw; another was the effort at a countywide transit authority. The “A2Success” title referred to the notion of rebranding all of Washtenaw County as Ann Arbor. The idea was that Ann Arbor was a nationally recognizable location with a favorable image. Indeed, SPARK (an economic development not for profit that is partly supported by tax dollars) has characterized itself as AnnArborUSA. Although A2Success is still listed on the Washtenaw County Economic Development webpage, its website is no longer active; an annual report was last published in 2009.
While SPARK has retained its “AnnArborUSA” title, it has pushed into new territory. It has had a business incubator in Plymouth Township (Wayne County) for some time. In 2011, it moved into Livingston County as well. In a telling statement at the time, its CEO, Paul Krutko, is quoted as saying, “We recognize the old parochial boundaries that are from the 18th Century … are not how the 21st Century works”.
Now those boundaries have been expanded over six counties. Greater Ann Arborincludes not only Washtenaw County and its adjacent semi-urbanized neighbors Livingston and Jackson Counties, but also rural Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties, not to mention Monroe County (which is due south from Detroit).
Located at the crossroads of the nation, anchored by the University of Michigan and home to one of the world’s most highly educated workforces, the Greater Ann Arbor Region is equipped and ready for business. No one can imagine, engineer, build and deliver your idea to the world better than we can.
Talk about a reach! It was announced in MLive this month by Councilmember Christopher Taylor. SPARK is, of course, involved. As quoted by MLive,
Ann Arbor SPARK president and CEO Paul Krutko said that the new region will help all parties involved by allowing them to take advantage of the Ann Arbor name while giving companies more flexibility when exploring the region.
The 10 state prosperity regions in Governor Snyder’s initiative
The geographic form of this enlarged Ann Arbor is easily traceable to Governor Snyder’s Regional Prosperity Initiative, which divides the state into ten economic zones. We are Zone #9. As the page describing the initiative acutely observes,
Michigan has numerous regional entities, including regional planning and development organizations, metropolitan planning organizations and workforce boards. Unfortunately, they were designed in such a way that results in overlapping goals and competing priorities.
And in another paragraph:
As it stands today, many of Michigan’s regions and their various public planning and service delivery entities have overlapping responsibilities yet competing visions for their economic priorities. The absence of a broad based regional vision and coordination of services create both redundancies and gaps.
So what does the Regional Prosperity Initiative amount to? It is a competitive grant program. As the Governor’s message indicates, the intent is to avoid additional “layers of government or bureaucracy”. Regional entities are encouraged to apply for grants from $250,000 to $500,000 (it is a little unclear whether that is a one-time grant or annual) to enact a 5-year “regional prosperity” plan that will have a “performance dashboard and measurable annual goals”. This is classical Management By Objective language. The required participants are split between existing educational, “workforce development” (typically training and employment counseling), economic development, and transportation agencies. Clearly the intent is to create an efficient business environment with good transportation and readily available employees throughout the region, as well as to facilitate recruitment of new business to the area.
Something is missing
So what do all these regions have in common? Mostly, they have no power and no relationship to the population of the region. And they are lacking a reliable funding source. SEMCOG has some power in that it allocates grants, and its funding is by dues paid from the constituent governments, who are all represented. The Regional Transit Agency will eventually have the ability to levy taxes (if the measures pass) and to make changes in local transit provider plans so that the area’s transit is better coordinated. But the funding for those local transit plans is mostly based on funding by the localities where they are based, so that the issue of governance of this additional layer of bureaucracy will likely re-emerge over time. Neither of these agencies has the power to pass or enforce laws and regulations over the region. The economic development initiatives appear to be most active as marketing efforts.
It is notable how variable and inconsistent the regions are in their definition. Washtenaw County is included in the greater Detroit metropolitan area in two, and separated from it in another. (What in the earth does Washtenaw County have in common with Hillsdale County? Not the politics, at least.) Does it make sense to try for “regional cooperation” when the regions keep shifting?
In the end, all of these efforts are destined to be limited in effect, because they have no effective governance mechanisms. Unless Michigan localities choose to be blended into regions, or unless the State Constitution is radically amended, most of these efforts will be talk, even if very well-informed talk by estimable citizens sitting around those tables, and staff generating reports with many tables of data. As we indicated in our first post of this series, it is very difficult to get localities, especially townships, to give up any level of sovereignty.
ADDENDUM: Alert readers will have noticed that I left out one recently-discussed region encompassing Ann Arbor: the “urban core” that AAATA is basing its recent expansion on. We discussed that at length in a recent post, Once Again, AAATA Exceeds Its Reach, and the post that follows it.
UPDATE: Another important “region” for Ann Arbor is the Ann Arbor MSA, or Metropolitan Statistical Area. This is a census region that includes the actual city of Ann Arbor but is actually the entire county. Some articles and reports talking about Ann Arbor or ranking it according to various measures are actually referring to the MSA because that is a region for which the census collects a lot of data.
The Milken Institute recently rated cities according to their economic development success, or “performance”. Ann Arbor was placed in “large cities” because the rating really applied to the MSA (Ann Arbor’s rank was 87, a loss of 11 notches in rank since last year).
SECOND UPDATE: Bridge Magazine has used the Governor’s economic regions in an analysis. They indicate that Region 9 (aka Greater Ann Arbor) nearly matches the Grand Rapids region in expected job growth for 2023, both just a little over 9%. Of course, that is simply a projection. Don Grimes was involved in the study. He links economic growth to population. (Can anyone say “young talent”?)
THIRD UPDATE:
The yellow region containing both East Lansing and Ann Arbor is the “University” region.
Yet another region that Ann Arbor belongs to is significant in transportation planning. The University Region is a planning category for the Michigan Department of Transportation. Projects are assigned by region, and there are staff specifically tasked for the region. Ann Arbor is separated in this case from the Detroit Metro region and combined with nine other counties, including Ingham County, the location of Michigan State University. Recently MDOT released a list of accelerated road projects that received additional funding from the Legislature. None of the projects in the University Region are located in Washtenaw County.
FIFTH UPDATE: SEMCOG has now posted a compilation of all their transportation initiatives.
SIXTH UPDATE: The RTA has hired a new CEO (Michael Ford) and as of May 2015 is moving along to create a transit plan, including a series of open houses around the region. Here is their new website.
INTRIGUING SERIES: CityLab has begun a series on borders that looks promising for many insights on regionalism, and regions. Drawing the Lines (January 2017)
Recent Comments