bfields's blog

One of the odder parts of the language which proposal D adds to the Ann Arbor city charter is that it puts out-of-town landlords on the same footing as residents. The city would match donations from "small donors" 9-to-1 (so, for each dollar donated to a campaign, the city would contribute $9). Who's a small donor?:

contributions $50 and under in the aggregate that are received from individual eligible voters and taxpayers in the City of Ann Arbor.

(Emphasis mine; excerpted from the full text of the amendment at the no on D site.)

Does that mean the city would also subsidize donations from out-of-town landlords? Why on earth?

Worth reading the whole text of the amendment. It doesn't give a good impression.

Ann Arbor friends: please vote NO on city proposals C and D.

The local League of Women voters has a good press release explaining why, with a longer report attached if you want the details: League of Women Voters of Washtenaw County Opposes Ann Arbor 2024 Ballot Proposals C and D.

Prop D attempts to set up public financing for Ann Arbor city council and mayor races. Like the League of Women voters, I'm in *favor* of public financing, but this is not a serious attempt. It's something that appears to have been developed by people on the losing side of recent elections who have an axe to grind, and went their own way instead of trying to make any kind of coalition with actual advocates or exports on election reform.

Ditto prop C, which makes local mayor and city council elections into a nonpartisan multi-way free-for-all. I'm skeptical of nonpartisan elections, honestly--I think party labels have some value--but I think there are arguments to be made for it. But if you were going to do it right, you'd make it conditional on ranked choice voting, or keep a primary and advance the top two vote-getters to the November election--something to mitigate spoiler effects and assure that the eventual winner has an actual majority. These folks aren't trying to do it right.

The proposals do have some chance of passing, because election day will be the first time a lot of people see them, and they may sound reasonable based on the ballot language itself. So we really do need those "no" votes from everyone else.

Websites from the "vote no" campaigns:

• Vote NO on Prop C
• Vote NO on Prop D

Other references:

• From mlive, Fair Elections Fund proposal in Ann Arbor conflicts with state law, AG’s office says
• From Damn Arbor, Opinion: Against Ann Arbor's nonpartisan and publicly funded election ballot initiatives
• Look up your November ballot at https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index

This presentation is useful for understanding some of their building plans.

My main concern: The A2Zero plan says we should cut vehicle miles traveled in half. It's a difficult goal, unfortunately, but I don't think it's weird or arbitrary: every serious climate plan assumes similar changes.

From what I've heard of preliminary plans for new schools (for example, Thurston Elementary), we're going in the opposite direction: adding more space for parking and for dropping off and picking up kids in cars.

We're going to be living with these plans for decades. We should do better.

housingdata.app is a convenient source for housing permits. Total annual units permitted each year, for Ann Arbor and for the county:

One "unit" of housing is a house, or an apartment, or a condo, etc., and the census gets these numbers by asking local governments each year about permits issued to build new housing units. Occasionally a permit is issued without the housing actually getting built, so this is a bit of an overestimate, but if it gives some idea of housing growth.

You'll note that there's more building each year in the county than in the city itself--for the obvious reason that it's bigger. If you want to make more of an apples-to-apples comparison, you can look at per capita numbers:

So, even on a per-capita basis, the county has generally gotten more housing development than Ann Arbor. A unit or two per 1000 residents per year just isn't very much.

(Note those zeroes for years before 1992. For some reason the census data set used by housingdata.app doesn't include population for the city until 1992. It might be interesting to get estimates from some other source, though the shape of the 1980-1991 graph wouldn't fundamentally be much different from that of the previous graph, since the population didn't change much through the eighties. Ann Arbor's biggest population increases happened before 1970.)

Anyway, the more interesting is how housing has (more likely, hasn't) kept up with demand. For that it'd be more helpful to compare with new jobs and students.

The August primary effectively determines the direction of our Ann Arbor's government. It's very quick to look up your ballot at https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index.

I recommend Christopher Taylor for mayor, and, for council:

ward 1: Cynthia Harrison
Ward 4: Dharma Akmon
Ward 5: Jenn Cornell

In wards 2 and 3, Chris Watson and Ayesha Ghazi Edwin are both uncontested. (But also, fortunately, both look great.)

All of them are sensible and dedicated to the kinds of changes we need.

Any plan dealing with climate change features transportation and land use prominently. See, for example, "Strategy 4" of Ann Arbor's A2Zero plan. We need to allow people to live in denser, more transit-friendly cities. At the local level we have a powerful lever in the form of zoning. Zoning for more housing supply also allows us to moderate housing prices, and to provide more services for the dollar: new housing brings in more tax dollars for transit, water, sewer, and roads, while the new expenses they bring are proportionately less, because it's more efficient to provide those services to a more compact population. All these candidates are people that understand that.

Also, the largest single component of Ann Arbor's city budget is for police, so I'm also happy to see Cynthia Harrison running, as she's been working locally on criminal justice reform for years.

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2022/05/public-invited-to-voice-opinions-on-proposed-plymouth-road-development.html

From https://www.a2gov.org/departments/planning/Pages/default.aspx

"A public meeting will be held on May 26, 2022 at 7:00 PM for a project at 2929 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor.

The proposed development includes demolition of an existing building and construction of a new building for use as a financial institution. The proposed single story building is approximately 4,750 square feet."

https://www.a2gov.org/departments/planning/Documents/Planning/UMCU%202929%20Plymouth%20Road%20-%20CPM%20Postcard%20-%20Final.pdf

UDC 5.29.5D gives criteria for approval of special use. Eh.... I don't think that really gives so much wiggle room.

Letter to planning commission:

I just saw the proposal for a new bank at 2929 Plymouth Road with a 3-lane drive through. That's a few minutes walk from where I live, so it really brings home the fact that we're still getting a lot of car-dependent development.

I hope you'll set a high bar for new drive-through: perhaps there's some real use for them, but yet another drive-through bank doesn't sound like one.

But more importantly, I wish I understood better what the bottlenecks are preventing us from updating our zoning more quickly. For example, currently it's going to take a couple more years to rezone Plymouth road to TC1. Why can't we rezone larger areas at once, and on a faster schedule?

Video, Legistar meeting details

Revisited the postponed 212 Miller site plan. I've decided I'm confused by the requirement that wheelchair access not be shared with cars. Lots of houses (including mine) are accessible only by the driveway. Also, anyone using a sidewalk crosses driveways constantly. I probably just don't understand. Anyway, they came up with a new solution with a lift.

Staff presentation on comprehensive (aka "master") plan review. There was an RFP issued for a consultant to run a comprehensive plan update process a few years ago, and I seem to remember they even chose someone, and then it was postponed due to COVID (I'm unclear exactly why).

Planning Commission work plan: what are the planning comission's priority for the next year and beyond? The discussion wandered a bit but seemed motivated mainly by impatience resulting from the mismatch between the number of ordinance changes commissioners would like to make and the number of changes staff thinks they can handle in a year.

Some brief mention of neighborhood pedestrian connections. It's a pet peeve of mine that unnecessary barriers often turn what should be a short pleasant walk into a long unpleasant one, so I'm glad to see this raised. I'm not sure what levers planning commission has to improve things, though, and the conversation didn't address that.

Video, Legistar details.

I mostly just skimmed through the discussion of the plan for an 8-unit residential building at 212 Miller (D2 zone). See also an mlive article on 212 Miller. Discussion is mainly about accessibility, since the only wheelchair access is through garage space. Postponed to next meeting (in two weeks) to consider alternatives.

A second petition is to annex 5.71 acres at 2600 Pontiac Trail. It will then eventually be zoned R4A and site plans (this is planned to be part of The Village of Ann Arbor project), passed without much discussion.

Next, a presentation on the Ann Arbor Sustainable Energy Utility. I don't know much of this, so I'm not entirely confident of my summary, but I'll try: They say that building entirely new replacement for DTE, or buying out DTE's infrastructure, would be a huge, expensive project. So they're talking instead about a utility that would be some sort of parallel supplement--microgrids of solar panels and batteries may just cover a few neighboring households, if I understand correctly. If I understand right, it would help owners finance panels and batteries by paying the upfront expenses and then collecting utility fees. Also, currently DTE caps solar production to what was historically consumed at that site, this would allow someone to produce more and share with a neighbor (say a neighbor on a shadier lot). More at www.a2gov.org/a2seu. Commissioner Lee has some questions about initial capital and responsibility for maintenance.

Finally there's the commission's work program (discussion starts here). Maybe it's the way it has to be, but it all feels a bit slow, and modest. I wonder what else should be there, or what should be reprioritized? Commissioners asked about TC1 rezoning schedule and it sounds like staff time and public engagement are bottlenecks.

Items that seem like they could add significant housing supply: TC1 Rezoning (Stadium 2022, Washtenaw 2023, Plymouth 2024). Parking minimums (2022). R4C (Someone asked a question about this but I'm still a little vague on what it would mean. Are there any other plans to liberalize existing zones? I guess that waits on the "single family zoning" subcommittee?

I noticed "Pedestrian connectivity between/among private developments", just listed vaguely as "future". I'd be curious to hear what might be feasible there, as it's long been a pet peeve of mine; there are lots of places in Ann Arbor where it looks like there should be a simple, direct, route pedestrian between points A and B, but in fact you have to make a long detour around a fence that has no real reason to be there.

Commissioner Wyche reminds the commission of the racist origins and effects of zoning and makes a plea for prioritizing equity and housing supply, mentioning "missing middle" housing in particular.