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Ann Arbor and the Climate Crisis: Policy and Outcomes

September 20, 2019

Thoughts on the day of the global climate strike

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 effort makes 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?

Categories: Basis, Neighborhoods, politics, Regional, Sustainability

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The Master Plan and Ann Arbor Emergent

July 6, 2019

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 Master Plan 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 the Planning 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. The Lockwood proposal for 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.

Categories: civic finance, Neighborhoods, politics, Regional, Sustainability

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Climate Change and Ann Arbor: Investing in the Future

November 23, 2018

Ann Arbor as a citizenry and as a civic body has always considered that we are naturally environmental leaders. We got there early on recycling, planted lots of trees, preserved lots of natural areas with distinct plant communities, and (if not always perfectly) addressed issues of water pollution, stormwater management and general responsible behavior on environmental issues. We have supplied a major voter base for countywide or regional park and land preservation millages (kill sprawl!) and transit ballots. Now we are faced, as is the nation and the world, with a desperate situation well beyond any simple local fixes. Climate change is becoming more and more evident as a serious threat to a comfortable existence or even to life itself.

This dramatic conclusion is based in part on a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which has been much quoted lately. There have been numerous studies about the phenomenon and its effects. So many of them have dealt with loss of species globally (The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert is a good start). But this not very digestible study is actually acknowledged to be a conservative consensus statement, yet it lays it right out there.

Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming of 1.5°C and increase further with 2°C.

That means an average global temperature increase of 1.5° degrees C (about 2.7° degrees F). And when are we projected to reach that? Sooner than we want to hear about.

From the IPCC SR1.5 report, October 2018.

This graph appears to indicate that the average temperature will increase to that 1.5° C amount in 2040. But note: there is a range indicated along that curve and the world average could move to the top of the range. See that spike in a recent year? That could mean that we arrive at a higher average earlier. And an important timing note: Avoiding overshoot and reliance on future large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions start to decline well before 2030.

So in other words, in 12 years from now, we’ll need extreme or possibly technological unavailable methods to retard warming if we haven’t already achieved that.The report adopts a somewhat optimistic tone that proposes a combination of carbon dioxide removal and major adaptive technology and policy changes. (Note that warming is not solely due to carbon dioxide; there are other greenhouse gases and physical effects such as change in albedo because of deforestration and ice melting. That is the “non-CO2 radiative forcing” part of the model.) But it is hard to share those hopes given today’s world, including our own national government and its pro-coal stance. Section D-5 implies a considerable “Kumbaya moment” on the part of the international community.

The systems transitions consistent with adapting to and limiting global warming to 1.5°C include the widespread adoption of new and possibly disruptive technologies and practices and enhanced climate-driven innovation. These imply enhanced technological innovation capabilities, including in industry and finance.

In other words, the nations and institutions of the world will really have to cooperate and give up a considerable amount of autonomy to prevent the predicted outcome.

There is no shortage of glum reports and predictive models out there. Numerous scientific papers have explored the effects of current and predicted climate changes on many social, biological and physical systems. Just the day after Thanksgiving (November 23, 2018) the Fourth National Climate Assessment was released. We will not review that here. Needless to say, little good news. And earlier this year an august group of scientists published a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) that warns of a possible tipping point in which Earth systems could be thrown completely off kilter, into a condition they call “Hothouse Earth”.

…we argue that social and technological trends and decisions occurring over the next decade or two could significantly influence the trajectory of the Earth System for tens to hundreds of thousands of years and potentially lead to conditions that resemble planetary states that were last seen several millions of years ago, conditions that would be inhospitable to current human societies and to many other contemporary species.

What’s A City to Do?

All this has not gone unnoticed in Ann Arbor. The City passed a Climate Action Plan (mostly just CO2 reduction) in 2012. Unfortunately, those goals were not met and there have been some revisions. Last year the Council announced that it would use part of the County mental health millage “rebate” for climate change action. Most of what was proposed in early memos was basically going to electrical solutions (which are possibly getting more climate-friendly, though there are still many coal power plants) and trying to switch as many functions to solar as possible. More recently a newly expanded City department of Sustainability and Innovations proposed a multi-faceted approach, much of which was also focused on solar and electric power, plus a dose of energy conservation. The proposal became snarled in its funding source, which was controversial (the lamented Mental Health Millage rebate). Another point of contention has been the rapid expansion of the Sustainability and Innovation Office. The office has grown from one person (Matt Naud, the longtime coordinator for the Environmental Council) to four or five (one position is vacant). The original proposal called for an increase in the budget for that office, which it was understood would be used for salary supplements for the new staff. After a failure of the original resolution and some amendments, the result was funding for some particular projects but the money came from the General Fund, leaving the question of use of the millage open till another day. The extra money to the department did not make it through the cuts.

New Talent, New Directions?

As the prospects for the world (and the City) have grown more urgently dire, it is reassuring that the new Director of Sustainability and Innovations comes with seriously impressive credentials. Missy Stults (her name is formally Melissa, but evidently this is the name she uses for all purposes) has a Ph.D. in urban resilience and a number of seriously heavy publications to her credit. One of them was a review of urban resilience which laid out a number of the issues involved. What’s that, you say? Urban what? Here is their definition:

Urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system-and all its constituent socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales–to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity.

One very important word there: adapt. This highlights the more recent trend in discussion of climate change effects. Basically, many people in this field now acknowledge that we probably aren’t going to make it. That is, we will not succeed as a world in reducing CO2 to the recommended levels. So the emphasis in recent years, as seen in the literature, is adaptation. How can we live in a changed world that is suffering the effects of climate change? This is something on which we can hope for leadership from Stults and her crew, since she has written extensively on adaptation as well as resilience.

What Ann Arbor has done mostly up to now, as displayed on the Sustainability page, has been to offer a miscellany of environmentally good practices, all nice but not solving the local problem. (As an extreme example, last year a local nonprofit was given a grant to put stickers on compostable containers. I didn’t see them but I assume it was a guide to proper materials.) I will continue to recycle and take toxics to the County until the end of my days, but that won’t solve the likely effects of climate change on our community. Doing an occasional NetZero demonstration project, buying an electric car for the City fleet, and putting a few solar panels on City buildings will not help us adapt, and sadly will not do much about the world’s problem either, since the infinitesimal fraction of CO2 that these will save is almost pointless (if admirable) in the face of Poland and Germany relying on coal power and the President of the United States lifting regulations on coal plants.

Capitalism and Contradictions

Ann Arbor has been on a development binge since the early years of this century. There was a major push to rezone the downtown and commercial areas in order to promote more dense development, and the buildings are just getting taller and taller. (You did notice that height limits were essentially removed in D1? And that giveaway to the developer of the Broadway parcel where he was awarded the most forgiving zoning classification possible?) Meanwhile, we talk green. The Mayor’s Green Fair. The Greenbelt (which is supposed to make up for development within the City). Recycling (too bad about that MRF). More bike paths (but hold the parks). These small cosmetic efforts do not really make up for the immense carbon footprint that we are adding with those buildings. Every building creates a material flow (inputs, outputs, including energy) that is a significant stress on the planet. A recent article on this subject states it this way:

…this acceleration, which took off in 2002, was not a short-term phenomenon but continues since more than a decade. Between 2002 and 2015, global material extraction increased by 53% in spite of the 2008 economic crisis…We find that in such a scenario until 2050 average global metabolic rates double...(indicating) a grand challenge calling for urgent action, fostering a continuous and considerable reduction of material flows to acceptable levels.

So while at the same time we’ve been patting ourselves on the back and rebranding traditional environmentalism as “sustainability” or even “climate change mitigation”, our policies have been literally driving up the temperature.

We have a new Council now with some thoughtful additions. But it will be up to all of us to figure out the adaptation strategies that can work for our community in an equitable and reasonably comfortable manner. It is quite a challenge.

Note: The date shown for this post is confusingly November, 2018. However, it was actually posted on January 1, 2019.

I mistakenly “published” my first draft in November and was able to take it back to draft status only after it had already attracted a comment. Actual publication was delayed until January 1.

Commenting policy: Many blogs have a commenting policy that provides for moderation of comments before they are posted. I have never done that, expecting that my commenters will treat me with the respect that I treat them. Recently one commenter chose to treat this post as a platform for what can only be described as a long chain of rants. It is incredible, but it seems that climate change is even more of a hot-button issue than Ann Arbor politics.

Be aware that if you do not follow my commenting policy, your comment will be deleted. What is that policy? It can be viewed under “About”.

Categories: Sustainability

Comments: 5 Comments

This Land is – Our Land?

August 31, 2018

This land is your land, this land is my land…This land is made for you and me. — Woody Guthrie

The concept of public land goes back so far that it is practically racial memory. The history of many peoples has been the war over open common land vs. privately held lands. Even today there are wars in some locations (e.g., Africa) between herders and farmers. Perhaps the best documented case of a transition from publicly held to privately held land, enclosure, is in England. Enclosure led to wealth for those who held the land, and forced many laborers into cities where they formed the basis of the Industrial Revolution. In this country, the great expanses of land “liberated” from the indigenous peoples who treated them as a common birthright made land ownership available to many common people via the Homestead Act. Property ownership is still one of the best predictors of wealth accumulation and a great majority of people still hope to own their “little bit of heaven”. But despite this drive, we tend to see public land as ours, held in common. In other words, it is our land, to be used for our benefit.

Public Land in Ann Arbor, Defined

Probably the greatest cause of civic strife in Ann Arbor over the years has been the dispute over public land. What is it? First, it is owned by a public entity, whether that is the public schools (but not a charter school), the University of Michigan, or an authority such as the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. But when owned by the City of Ann Arbor, – that is when many of us feel ownership.

Public Land is a zoning category and is shown on maps as PL. As defined, “This district is designed to classify publicly owned uses and land and permit the normal principal and incidental uses required to carry out governmental functions and services.”

It has 10 “permitted uses”.It seems clear that the authors of this classification were thinking about parks right off the top. Note that sentence in the first use about structures that are not incidental to the use of the land? The first three items are about parks and open space. Most of the others are about obvious governmental functions, though item (f) might raise some questions. The PL designation is restrictive and creates a barrier to development.

Zoning for two important blocks along William St. Dark red is D1, burnt umber is D2.

Public ownership does not mean PL zoning. For example, none of the public parking lots in the downtown are PL. They are all zoned D1 (core downtown) or D2 (edge). (The Ann Arbor GIS system contains a very detailed zoning map.)

Two of the most hotly disputed public land holdings in Ann Arbor, the old Y lot and the Library Lot, have never been zoned PL. Note that the Ann Arbor District Library and the Blake Transit Center (and Post Office) are all PL, as is Liberty Plaza. This means that those parcels could not be developed unless they are rezoned, but no such obstacle exists for the two former parking lots.

Proper Uses of Public Land

So regardless of zoning, what is the proper use of land owned by a public entity? One hopes that it is for a civic purpose, that is, a purpose that will enhance the condition of the civic body, its residents, its businesses, and its private property owners (taxpayers).

And how do we define that civic purpose? That is the job of the policymakers (City Council and certain boards and authorities). We have many policy priorities in the City of Ann Arbor, well recognized and discussed over years. They include environmental objectives such as energy conservation, management of storm water, and conservation of open space; enhancement of business activities (especially in regard to downtown properties), and attention to zoning and planning dictates. Another objective that has become more and more urgent is the provision of affordable housing, both in the sense of subsidized housing for the most vulnerable populations and in so-called “workforce” housing for moderate-income (60%- 100% or sometimes even 120% of median annual wage) people. And for downtown parcels, parking for automobiles is still desired, though often criticized.

But wait – there is another objective. Land in Ann Arbor has become so valuable that it is a resource ripe for extraction. One can actually mine money from it, especially if it is in or near downtown. Given the perennial structural deficit that the City often runs, and the ambitions of the Council majority (and now, our very forward-looking City Administrator), it is irresistible to look for a cash return as well. The downtown parcels are actually pots of money just sitting there unrealized.

Given the value of downtown parcels, it is a temptation for Council to try to attain all their policy goals and at the same time realize a cash return. This inevitably sets them up for some awkward gymnastics. Developers may wish to develop downtown, but they also insist on making a profit. It is called “Return On Investment”. After all, developing parcels and negotiating with politicians is a lot of work.

Another complication is that there has been a fluctuating policy in which sale of city property was designated to be deposited in the City Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The history was well reviewed in the Ann Arbor Chronicle. This policy puts a moral and political pressure on the Council to obtain a cash return on the property. But obtaining cash and also the type of development that they want is truly challenging.

Let’s Do an RFP

The most direct and effective way for Council to obtain policy goals and also a reasonable financial objective is to execute a Request for Proposals. Typically these invite proposals from developers to fit some predetermined criteria and also invite them to offer their best price. Also typically, there need to be some guidelines for how the proposals will be reviewed and the City is always free to refuse all offers. (This actually happened in the case of 415 W. Washington, where an RFP issued in 2008 attracted relatively few bidders, and none of the proposals met the standards of the Council.)

The history of RFPs, as used by the Ann Arbor City Council to dispose of public land, is rather sad. The first RFP issued for this purpose in recent history was for affordable housing on the lot recently vacated by the old YMCA (we now know this as the old Y lot). The logic and history behind that RFP were described in an article for the Ann Arbor Observer (the actual published version was edited for length and content but this is the most complete version). We told some of the story here of the William Street Station, the project that won the bid but was killed within a week of being finalized.

Another RFP was issued ostensibly to find an appropriate developer for the Library Lot, the former parking lot next to the Ann Arbor District Library. That story is told here and in many posts about the long struggle over the Valiant proposal to develop a hotel and conference center. (See the page Library Lot Conference Center for a list of posts.) Ultimately, the Council terminated the RFP and made no awards. Instead, it directed the DDA to take another look, with the evident intention that there should be a comprehensive downtown planning process. The beginning of this “look” is told here, and the end was the Connecting William Street project, in which the DDA sought to convince us that every surface lot should be built to its highest possible density. That report was never taken up by Council, though the Planning Commission, under the leadership of Kirk Westphal, placed the report on a list of “resources”.

With these successes behind it, the Council sought to make things simpler. Both the Y lot and the Library Lot were simply placed with a broker and put up for sale. But neither Council nor the Ann Arbor public could quite shake the notion that public land should be sold only with some public benefits attached to the deal. (We reviewed both the history of the Library Lot and its importance in Ann Arbor’s culture and concept of ourself in our post, Core Space and the Soul of Ann Arbor.) Thus, both of these sales became mired in court cases.

But that is a story for later.

NOTE: The “Council majority” referred to here is the Taylor caucus (the “Powers That Be“) that has existed for some years, in succession to the Hieftje caucus. A minority of Council members (the “Neighborhoods“) have opposed many of the policy directions and substantive decisions. However, the recent primary has apparently changed those ratios. See The Primary Struggle for the Future of Ann Arbor for details.

UPDATE: The fate of our downtown public lands is being hotly debated (October 2018). The immediate cause is Proposal A on the November ballot, which would reserve the Library Lot for use as a public park. This is in direct contradiction with the intent of Mayor Christopher Taylor and allies to have Core Spaces develop the lot. There is a pending court case regarding some hasty contract signing without the approval of Council, in apparent violation of our Charter. (Here is an account published by the Ann Arbor News.)

Meanwhile, the fur is flying as both sides present their case for the ballot issue. As this account by the News explains, a group has formed to fight the ballot issue and persuade Ann Arbor citizens not to vote for the proposal. Unfortunately, some of the assertions by this group border (in my view) on untruths and certainly push the boundaries of polite discourse. Recently Mayor Taylor himself has made an open plea to voters which contains hefty doses of hyperbole.

Mary Hathaway, one of the leading lights for the Library Lot park struggle, has responded with a lengthy letter refuting many of Taylor’s points. She admonishes him for the negative tone of his message and asks where the cheery positive person that she remembers has gone. And she addresses directly the financial bind the City Council has made for itself, with both the Y lot and the Library Lot in play, and the evident intent to use proceeds from one sale to pay the expenses of re-acquiring the other.

The stakes are indeed high, both monetarily and in terms of credibility of the Mayor, who recently won re-election over a strong opponent (Jack Eaton) but who also lost many of his Council allies. The fate of the ballot issue will tell us much about the future direction of Ann Arbor, since it likely breaks down so neatly along the fault lines that divide us.

SECOND UPDATE: (December 2019) Proposal A did indeed pass in August 2018, by 53.11% to 46.89%. The howls from the losers are still being heard. Meanwhile, the agreement to sell the space to the Core Spaces developers was cancelled, and the lawsuit brought by Council members over the hasty contract signing was settled.

Mary Hathaway passed away in October 2019 and is much mourned.

A “Center of the City” task force was appointed and has been deliberating about the future of the Library Lot, in accordance with the voters’ wishes. An item on the December 16 Council agenda would advance some temporary usage plans for the space.

Categories: Basis, civic finance, politics, Sustainability

Comments: 6 Comments

Ann Arbor Emergent

January 1, 2018

Much of Ann Arbor’s political polarization in recent years has been from our various efforts to seize the future. One problem with visualizing the future is that none of us has a perfect understanding of the outcome from a specific action. We can surmise, we can expect, we can predict. Often, whether we understand this or not, we are following a model (a set of hypothetical outcomes based on a perceived mechanism). But while a model can be used to forecast, it is likely to fail at some level because other factors have not been considered.

My best example of this is the Washtenaw County budget director’s model for revenue in the 2002-2004 timeframe. “The best predictor of the future is the past.” Since development (sprawl) was very rapid, the tax revenue for the County was increasing by 6% a year or more. He drew a straight-line curve showing a huge growth in funds over ten years. So the County forged ahead with several high-ticket projects in confidence that the funds would be available to pay the costs. He failed to anticipate either the many policy brakes (Greenbelt, etc.) governments put on sprawl or the massive economic collapse that began in Michigan as early as 2006.

Currently, much policy in Ann Arbor is being driven by models, voiced or implied. For example, the model that if we continue to increase the housing supply, even with extremely high-priced luxury housing, the supply-demand ratio will mean that other housing in the area will become more affordable. This is stated as an immovable law of nature.

But that can only be tested by putting a particular policy into place. The outcome will be fixed, whether it fulfills that prediction or not. So, often discussion of the emergent Ann Arbor is composed of warring models and thought experiments. A piece is missing, though.

Have we as a populace and as a civic body really examined the critical questions of what that emergent Ann Arbor should be?

We have not really elucidated our game board. How can we test proposed actions and initiatives against a desired outcome if we don’t even have a picture of the outcome? Do we really know what we want or what the future we are trying to achieve looks like? This leaves so many questions unanswered. We’ll try to consider them one at a time.

1.Where and what is Ann Arbor?

City of Ann Arbor (red) and areas with Ann Arbor zip codes. (Click to enlarge.)

Ann Arbor Zip Codes and Addresses

To some extent, Ann Arbor is what you make of it, geographically, at least. There is, of course, the City of Ann Arbor, a landlocked city that is now annexing its final few township islands. Some of those islands are still part of Ann Arbor Township, a completely different municipality. But there are many people who have Ann Arbor addresses who don’t live within the city limits. Note that Ann Arbor zip codes include addresses in Superior, Webster, Scio, Lodi and Pittsfield Townships. (Only Ypsilanti does not share an Ann Arbor zip code.)

This is significant because though all those addresses pay property tax to their local governments, many people and businesses in them identify themselves as “Ann Arbor” and have an interest in the future of that label.

The Ann Arbor Public Schools

AAPS School District. The eastern border in Ypsilanti is Golfside Avenue.

Another “Ann Arbor” is the Ann Arbor Public School District. The AAPS is thought to provide high-quality schools and it is an important feature of the Ann Arbor image and reality. It is a major real estate selling point. (Often, houses and condominiums for sale in the townships are labeled, “Ann Arbor schools”.)

Of course, children who attend these schools have a common background because of that and it creates a sense of community. (Parents are engaged too.) Further, everyone in the district votes for the AAPS School Board and pays AAPS school taxes.

These boundaries are identical for the Ann Arbor District Library. The library was historically part of the school district. The AADL split from the AAPS in 1996 and succeeded in persuading residents to vote in a perpetual millage (does not have to be renewed) of 2.0 mills. The AADL has won many awards and has multiple activities and several branches, including one in Pittsfield Township. It is an important community center.

Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area

Portion of SE Michigan as shown in U.S. Census map of MSAs for the U.S.A. Note that Washtenaw County is “Ann Arbor”. The adjacent MSA, Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, defines the combined Detroit Metro.

As we noted in an earlier post about regions including Ann Arbor, it was determined some years ago that the magic of the name, “Ann Arbor” could be used as a business and economic development asset for the entire county. Thus, Ann Arbor SPARK became “Ann Arbor, USA” and a marketing effort defined the entire county region as Ann Arbor. This designation has been solidified by the U.S. Census descriptor of our primary Census area (the Metropolitan Statistical Area, or MSA) as “Ann Arbor” – but its boundaries are those of Washtenaw County.

Census information showing median income by MSA. Arrow is to Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor MSA). Note we are one of the 5 wealthiest counties in the Lower Peninsula.

The actual Census was in 2010. It is supposed to be a comprehensive picture of the American population and includes much demographic and economic information. The basic Census uses a combination of paper forms and door-to-door interviews. The American Community Survey (ACS) continues to do spot surveys and produces updated information on many fronts, especially demographic and economic data. (Because it is not comprehensive, one needs to be cautious about drawing conclusions, since sampling error is always a possibility.) Graphic displays of this information can show a map of the U.S. in which various factors are called out by MSA. With just a little practice, one can quickly pick out Washtenaw County, right next to Wayne County in the far southeastern corner.

Richard Florida’s map of metro inequality. Darker blue means more segregation by income. (Click for larger image.)

This has led to much confusion because so many articles, especially those covering some national topic, use the Census MSA data for analysis. Data miners and analysts pick up all that nice easily accessible data and draw conclusions which show up in headlines that say “Ann Arbor is…” A good example was Richard Florida’s 2015 article on America’s Most Economically Segregated Cities. Headlines indicated that Ann Arbor was the 8th most economically segregated. Florida’s article was based on a longer study he did earlier, which in turn was based on a Pew Research Center study. The source of data for all? You guessed it – the Census. But while Florida referred often to “metros”, the title of his study was Segregated City. You’d have to forgive the casual reader for supposing that it meant Ann Arbor City. But if you examine the map closely, you’ll see that little Washtenaw County rectangle. Since this article was picked up by a number of mainstream media, the conflation and confusion was magnified.

Ann Arbor resident Jean Henry reminded The Ann that despite A2’s recent accolades, we were ranked eighth in income segregation by The New York Times. (Quoted in The Ann, Ranking the Rankers)

Washtenaw County median income by census tract. Dark green is highest income.

This is more than confusing, it conveys the wrong information. Washtenaw County is indeed an example of income segregation. But Ann Arbor City actually contains a large number of the lower-income census tracts. The county includes some very well-heeled communities outside of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, such as Barton Village and several of the townships. It is necessary to go down to the level of individual census tracts to see that, and few studies do that.

How do we rate?

By now it has gotten so commonplace to see “Ann Arbor number one” stories that we could almost assume that we have somehow done everything perfectly. How can you argue with success? But that doesn’t necessarily jibe with the daily experience of many, or keep us from arguing about details. Ann Arbor author Patti S. Smith, writing in The Ann, analyzed a variety of the surveys and rating stories and made some good observations in her article, Ranking the Rankers: Just What do Those Top Ten Lists Mean? She offered a number of cautions, including that one should examine the methodology used by the ratings’ source.

One of the recent ratings came from Niche.com – this one was pretty good. Ann Arbor is the best city in the U.S. to live in! Looking a little closer, it seems really good since we only scored Bs on housing, crime, jobs, and cost of living, and C on weather. They partly base their ranking on surveys and reviews. But also on many publicly available data bases. Yup, the Census Bureau was the first on the list.

Where are we talking about?

The take-home message? It is clear that Ann Arbor is both a city and a region. In another state it would probably be a larger city, perhaps with about the same geographic area as those zip codes, or even larger. We function much like a metropolitan area. But we don’t really have a command of that entire area, yet we are expected to serve it in many ways.

It is important as we form an idea of where our future should lead us that we have a clear understanding of the Where that we mean. Sometimes real “granularity” is needed (getting down to the details, perhaps as small as specific neighborhoods or even just a few blocks). Sometimes it is about the greater metropolitan region or sometimes as broad as the County. Often when we are talking about the urban area, the City of Ypsilanti becomes important to our discussion because we have so many dependencies on one another. But policy discussions about future initiatives should be informed by an acute awareness of which Ann Arbor we are assigning characteristics or responsibility to. Too often, our leaders make sweeping statements about what Ann Arbor is or should be. For those of us especially who live in the City of Ann Arbor, we need to know where they are.

NOTE: For information from the U.S. Census about Washtenaw County, consult this page.

Categories: Basis, Sustainability

Comments: 10 Comments

Core Spaces and The Soul of Ann Arbor

April 16, 2017

It seems to have gone on forever. But really, only for about a decade. Now here we are, once again deciding on the fate of the Library Lot – that small precious piece of real estate next to the Ann Arbor District Library.

Rendering of proposed Core Spaces building as proposed to Council.

The Ann Arbor City Council will vote on this resolution on April 17, 2017. It either will or will not award development rights for the Library Lot (retaining ownership of the actual land) to Core Spaces, which describes itself as “a full‐service real estate development, acquisition and management company”, and further identifies its target markets as “educational”, in other words, student-oriented. The result will be a 17-story building, bigger than anything we could have imagined 10 years ago.

Feelings are running high and the volume of email to Council must be stupendous. Just to make the drama more intense, because the resolution disposes of city property, it requires 8 of 11 Council votes (counting the Mayor). Three CM have made their dislike fairly public (Eaton, Kailasapathy, Lumm). So each one of the remaining 8 can be the one to make or break the deal. It is generally understood that Mayor Taylor favors it. Are all the rest committed to support it, in the face of a great deal of public opposition? Some, especially those who are new to Council or up for re-election, are likely feeling the heat.

Why is this so important to so many? Its importance (as measured by heat and light generated) is far more than most tall building development projects downtown. There are many facets to the issue. But most of all, this decision is symbolic about the direction that Ann Arbor is headed. In many ways, it is a battle for the soul of Ann Arbor.

What Do We Want To Be?

This article from the Ann Arbor Observer (2005) outlined many issues and described the Calthorpe public process. (Click for link.)

The battle for the future of Ann Arbor has been the underpinning of our politics for over 10 years. One could argue that it began with the election of John Hieftje as Mayor in 2000, or the renewal of the DDA Charter in 2003. That launched an emphasis on downtown development that has changed not only the appearance of Ann Arbor’s downtown, but its perceived purpose and use. There was also a shift in the objectives for the city as a whole. We have often thought our city to be rather special, in a community-supportive, casually fun but also fairly intellectual, colorful but not in an overly contrived sort of way. See our post, What Does it Mean to be an Ann Arbor Townie. In other words, a city to serve its citizens and welcome visitors on our own terms. But in recent years, a new agenda has been espoused by the majority on our City Council. This is spelled out at length in The Placemaking Agenda and Ann Arbor Politics. Briefly, it is to transform the city into a cradle of entrepreneurship and enterprise, especially by attracting “talent” (young people who can start or sustain high-tech enterprises). Much of this is based on the concept of the “Creative Class”, as described by the urbanist Richard Florida in his 2002 book.

One could argue that Ann Arbor is doing very well and is succeeding in this talent-seeking strategy. We are listed over and over again on national lists as in the top 10 for various qualities. Maps showing economic success usually show our Washtenaw County as standing out. But interestingly, Richard Florida himself has had something of a change of heart. Florida’s recent book, The New Urban Crisis, recognizes that the type of “success” we have enjoyed has come with a cost to whole swaths of demographics. As he says in a recent article,

As techies, professionals, and the rich flowed back into urban cores, the less advantaged members of the working and service classes, as well as some artists and musicians, were being priced out….I found myself confronting the dark side of the urban revival I had once championed and celebrated…As the middle class and its neighborhoods fade, our geography is splintering into small areas of affluence and concentrated advantage, and much larger areas of poverty and concentrated disadvantage.

And a summary from another article :

America today is beset by a New Urban Crisis. If the old urban crisis was defined by the flight of business, jobs, and the middle class to the suburbs, the New Urban Crisis is defined by the back-to-the-city movement of the affluent and the educated—accompanied by rising inequality, deepening economic segregation, and increasingly unaffordable housing.

Sure enough, a graphic from the article shows that Ann Arbor is #11 on his “Urban Crisis Index”. Do increasing economic inequality, loss of affordability in housing, and racial/class segregation sound familiar? Washtenaw County paid good money a couple of years ago for a consultant to tell us this about ourselves. So, Ann Arbor is succeeding as a business proposition. Is it losing what makes it successful as a place to live? As a community in the whole?

(Florida will be keynoting this year’s SPARK meeting on April 24. It’ll be interesting to hear what he says about our local situation.)

The Importance of the Library Lot

So what does the Library Lot have to do with all this? Because the Library Lot belongs to the entire City of Ann Arbor, and thus presumably its public, and because the project is so wildly out of scale with the downtown historic districts that supposedly make our downtown successful, not to mention the residential neighborhood immediately to the south, and because while this is a public asset, the benefit to the Ann Arbor public has not evidently been a consideration. (No public process has been employed to arrive at this use.) For all these reasons, the debate has been more passionate than for other downtown projects. The Ann Arbor public continue to assert ownership. For that reason, it stands as a symbol of the decisions to be made about our downtown, and thus our city.

But many other interests have eyed this choice little bit of real estate for particular ends. The DDA has had a single-minded intent to increase the magnitude of development in the downtown, generally. A group of influential insiders put forth a plan as early as 2008 to build a hotel and conference center on the lot, with the DDA’s assistance. The Library Lot Conference Center controversy and battle is recorded in this series of posts. The effort was finally killed by Council resolution in April, 2011 after a public campaign by concerned citizens. Meanwhile, the DDA had constructed an underground parking structure in which part of the structure was specifically reinforced to support the intended hotel.

Projection of desired building density (700 F.A.R) for Library Lot in DDA study, 2013. Purple area is unreinforced “plaza”.

Things slowed down for a bit while the Ann Arbor District Library planned to build a new library. The new building would not have been on the Lot (the current building would first have been demolished) but doubtless the Lot would have been used for staging. However, that bond proposal was defeated in November, 2012. The DDA sprang to the task of planning the immediate area in a project called “Connecting William Street”. They used a pseudo-public approach (online surveys, public meetings) which unsurprisingly arrived at the conclusion that a tall building was needed on the lot. The plan met with derision in some quarters and the City Council declined to adopt it. It was added to the “resource documents” for the Planning Commission in March, 2013.

In a memorably feckless act (thank you, CM Kunselman), Council passed a resolution in April 2014 to hire a real estate broker. They put the Lot up for sale. Although the resolution cites the Connecting William Street project, no further effort was made to establish what the Ann Arbor public saw as the best use for this site. Further, it accepted the notion that the reinforced portion of the lot would be used for building. So here we are.

From page 42, Downtown Development Strategies, Calthorpe Associates, 2005

The Calthorpe process, 2005, is often cited as demonstrating that there was a public process followed for the fate of this parcel. There was a report on Downtown Development Strategies issued (many recommendations have been ignored). It does not make a specific recommendation on the Library Lot. However, it calls for building height to be stepped down toward the residential neighborhoods, especially that last block before William. And it calls for a Town Square.

ADDENDUM: The Library Lot was briefly, but seriously, considered as a site for a new City Hall, a.k.a Municipal Center, in 2006. Here is the task force report. Community Security and Public Space 2006 The report specifically notes the importance of “an outdoor gathering place” and put the Library Lot high on the alternatives for a new Municipal Center that would include a public space.

It’s Not Just About a Park

Admittedly, the idea of a downtown “Central Park” (or Town Square) has been a major theme of the disputes about the Library Lot. The Library Green Conservancy has been advocating vigorously for a park on the portion of the lot without special reinforcement, and there was that whole problem with collection of signatures on petitions. The DDA has been trying to put a damper on that idea for years. (The Connecting William Street exercise did not even acknowledge the possibility.)

It’s Not Just About the Parking

The deal has serious implications to downtown parking. It would give away a substantial part of this expensive structure to a private enterprise. (Some historical details are here: note we will be paying interest for many years to come.) There are also legal questions that have not been satisfactorily answered. Read it here. Finally, it will reduce access to downtown by its customers. Downtown business organizations have objected.

It’s About Our Downtown, Our City

Our social media and comment pages are flooded with anguished complaints and worries about this project. It is clear that our citizens do not believe this will enhance our experience of our city and that it will likely damage the downtown. The comments shown below are from my personal social media feeds (Facebook, Nextdoor) and are unedited but anonymous because I don’t wish to make the writers’ identity the issue. (Click on the boxes to read at full magnification.)

Note that these comments are all about quality of life and the viability of our downtown businesses. There is a concern about the resilience of this part of our community, and of course the Downtown is still the center of town, and a location that affects us all.

If Council does vote to approve this deal, they will be going against the express wishes of a substantial number of their constituents. Based on comments in the media, it seems that they are dazzled by the cash offer. A complication is that it will supposedly be an assist to “affordable housing”. But the benefits in that regard are modest. (One scenario even has the City paying over a million dollars back in order to obtain more units.) We have not really had a city-based discussion about what we want in “affordable housing” or what our best means of achieving that are. It seems imprudent to sell off one of our choicest assets for this purpose, especially since so many questions persist about the effects of the parking on both businesses and city finances. If our city finances are so challenged (and they do not seem to be) we should be looking at savings or new taxes instead of selling off our real estate.

Or – is Council going to go ahead with this because of the dogma of dense development? In that case, are they considering the health of our present community? Or are they aiming for a different one? If the latter, they’d better consider more carefully the consequences of their actions. A city is a complex ecosystem. The Council has a solemn duty here. I hope that they vote to preserve our community. It has so much good, still.

ADDENDUM: Here is the Ann Arbor News preview of tonight’s vote. “And the consequences of whichever way the council votes could last for generations.” Yup.

UPDATE: The Council voted to sell the lot, 8-3. All the usual suspects voted as anticipated. Here is what Mayor Taylor had to say about it.

“I love Ann Arbor the way it is. We are not Chicago or Detroit, and I don’t want to be. ”

Categories: Basis, Business, Downtown, politics, Sustainability

Comments: 7 Comments

Bagging the Plastics Ban: Washtenaw County’s Never-was Ordinance

January 4, 2017

It was one of those great outrages. In the closing days of the 2016 session, the Michigan Legislature killed any possibility of Washtenaw County’s attempt to regulate plastic grocery bags. “Ban on local plastic bag bans now Michigan law”, reported MLive. Outgoing State Representative Jeff Irwin decried this defeat for local control. This was seen as another case of Republican domination of progressive Michigan municipalities (cities and counties). A few days later, another news account stated, Washtenaw County concedes it can’t enforce disposable bag ordinance. The bill (Senate Bill 853) is succinct but also thorough: it mentions regulation of any “auxiliary container” of almost any composition as being forbidden for local units of government. (There goes any hope of banning styrofoam clamshells.)

But the story is more complicated than it appears at first and there are some questions.

Washtenaw County’s ordinance is the only such regulation in the State of Michigan.

As explained in this memo from Water Resources Commissioner Evan Pratt to the Board of Commissioners’ Ways and Means Committee last May, the existence of Senate Bill 853 was already understood at the time the BOC passed the ordinance.

Senate Bill 853, currently pending in Michigan legislature, seeks to withhold local government authority to regulate “auxiliary containers,” a category within which carryout grocery bags falls. If SB853 is adopted by the State of Michigan, it would act to preempt a County bag ordinance. Washtenaw County seeks to retain its local authority to regulate the material in furtherance of its duty to optimally manage solid waste within its geographic boundaries, and to increase Washtenaw County’s recycling and waste economy to full extent possible.

The motivation for adopting an ordinance in the face of a likely preemption by the State is unclear. Are we trying to make a point or hoping that it will survive to be enforced? That expression about “seeks to retain its local authority” seems to argue the first.

In spite of most indications, the ordinance is not just about plastic bags. It also applies to paper bags.

The proposed bag ordinance is not a ban. And it sanctions disposable paper bags just as much as plastic bags. This although almost all the educational material about the ordinance specifies plastic bags. The slide show on the ordinance given to the BOC in a work session is all about the hazards of plastics. The memo that accompanied the resolution stated that it was about “a policy to combat the problems caused by excessive plastic bag waste in our community”. The resolution setting the public hearing on the ordinance mentions only plastic bags. And yet the ordinance cracks down just as hard on paper grocery bags.

Did the Commissioners know what they were passing?

Now, it is hard to love plastic grocery bags. They are ugly, consume valuable unrenewable resources, are a hazard to animals, glob up machinery of recycling plants, and last longer than the human race. They actually cost the County and other units of government money. They are difficult to recycle even when collected. Surely no one who cares could object to banning them, and in fact this was a very popular idea.

Paper grocery bags are another matter. Many of us reuse these bags many times or at least once. They compost. They are recyclable. They are most often made from recycled paper. No, they are not a “zero footprint” item but just not in the same class as a plastic bag. Besides, that is not how this ordinance was being sold. Yet, they are being treated exactly the same as plastic bags in the ordinance. The indication is that customers should bring reusable bags (most often cloth).

The whole enterprise has a rather unpleasant air of bait-and-switch. Don’t like plastic bags? Fine, and also you can’t use paper bags (hidden in the fine print).

It suddenly seems to be about money.

Here’s what the ordinance does. It imposes a ten cents fee on the consumer for each plastic OR PAPER bag used. Of that, 8 cents goes into a new fund (the Stewardship Fund) that the County has created. The retailer gets 2 cents, which is to be used only for enforcing the ordinance. There are also civil infraction fines for retailers who do not cooperate.

What this does is to create a monetary incentive for the County for consumers to use plastic bags (or paper). You rush into Meijer to buy some milk and bread. Cashier says “it’ll cost you 10 cents per bag”. You say, “whatever”. Out the door. It actually incentivizes the retailer to keep on providing these bags too. I can’t imagine the County sending around deputies to check on the quality of their environmental education efforts. The cost to the retailer for providing plastic bags is less than for paper bags, but they get to keep the same fee.

So how effective would this have been in preventing use of plastic bags? My estimation is, not very. If your budget is very, very tight, you might sweat those couple or five dimes. Or you might remember to bring bags whenever you have a big shopping to do. (As far as I can tell, no forgiveness for simply reusing old paper bags, either. The ordinance imposes conditions on the “reusable bag” that may be used.) Mostly, it would just be an additional cost that most consumers would pay at checkout. And money would go to the County.

It is hard to escape the thought that this might be a way to raise revenue for the County’s solid waste endeavors as much or more than actually changing behavior on bags. Those fees would add up. Do you know how hard it is these days for counties to get money? And the Washtenaw County solid waste program used to be dependent on tipping fees from the Salem Township landfill. I don’t know how that is going these days.

By the way, I think the fees may not have passed the test of the Bolt decision. Michigan municipalities are not supposed to impose new fees unless they are related to the delivery of a specific service. I don’t see how this qualifies. One of those sticky only-in-Michigan constitutional issues.

If only…

What might have worked? There are many examples around the country. If the County could have simply banned use of plastic bags (and it does ban some things, like smoking in workplaces), that would have achieved the stated objective more simply and effectively. For reducing waste due to paper bags: many retailers even now give a 5 cent credit for each bag you bring in. Depending on the market, they could increase that to 10 cents and raise their prices slightly. That is essentially the same as charging 10 cents for use of a new bag.

Good legislation should achieve its stated goal without being any more intrusive than necessary. This did not pass the test.

Meanwhile, let’s lean back and blame it on the Republicans. They probably deserve it.

Categories: Sustainability

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