Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

2% = $9,500 - what is 2% for you?

Posted by MarkDilley on 1. November 2004

via Mlive:

Coleman gets 2% raise to $484,500

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman received a 2 percent pay hike from the U-M Board of Regents Thursday.

Coleman’s base salary will increase from $475,000 to $484,500. The pay hike is retroactive to Sept. 1.

Coleman’s raise is the first since she assumed the presidency in August 2002. Last year, she and her administrators told regents that they would not take raises at a time when state funding was decreasing.

This year, in light of continued tight state funding, Coleman asked for a 2 percent raise, said Regent Olivia Maynard, D-Goodrich, chairperson of the board’s compensation and personnel committee. Maynard, who announced the raise during the regents meeting at the U-M-Flint campus, said the board gave Coleman “a very solid evaluation.”

Maynard said that raises also have been determined for other U-M top administrators, but Provost Paul Courant said U-M won’t release the percentage increases until later this year.

Comment [2]

Voter Fraud in Ann Arbor?

Posted by Ari Paul on 1. November 2004

From the New York Times:

And in Michigan, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said she had to put out a statement in mid-October about where to send absentee ballots after voters in the Ann Arbor area received calls telling them to mail the ballots to the wrong address.

Michigan/Ohio Live Election Coverage on Indymedia

Posted by Murph on 1. November 2004

The Michigan and Ohio branches of Indymedia will be featuring live coverage of local events on Election Day, and are encouraging reports to their toll-free hotline:

Breaking News Hotline: 1 877 825 9535 – Call in breaking news regarding suspected voter disfranchisement, protest responses to injustices at the polls, and other election-related activity. Michigan IMC invites callers from MI, OH, and the rest of the US and the globe to call in news from the polls and the streets.

Michigan IndyMedia also will have a live streaming audio feed (with assistance from Ann Arbor’s WCBN) and a textmessage update/alert feed—visit the website to find both of these.

Comment [1]

Last Minute Election Volunteering

Posted by Murph on 1. November 2004

With polls showing Michigan somewhere between “total tossup” and “solid Kerry”, and Ohio recognized to be crucial to the turnout of the election, voter turnout and poll monitoring movements are still recruiting.

Ann Arbor/Detroit Poll Monitors

Ryan Bates, organizer for MOSES’ Election Protection efforts in Ann Arbor and Detroit, sends the following e-mail for people interested in serving as poll monitors and troubleshooting any difficulties that voters may experience:

For those of who have friends haven’t got to training, or you haven’t got to training yourself, by popular demand, we have scheduled a fourth election protection training

7 pm

MSA Chambers Third Floor of the Union

facilitated by the vivacious Ashwini Hardikar!

Remember: First shift, 5 am union steps

second shift, 1pm union steps

Also, if anyone has a car, poll drivers are still needed!

Jobs, 10/hour jobs are still available!

questions, comments, call me. Info below.

peace!

bates

___
-Civil rights are on the line this November!
Volunteer to monitor a poll in Detroit— email dasbates@umich.edu
-Want to make mad cash turning out the vote
in Detroit in the days leading up to Nov. 2?

email dasbates@umich.edu
——————————————-
Ryan Bates
MOSES Electoral Organizer
dasbates@umich.edu
office: 313-962-5290 ext. 20
cell: 248-787-6767

Voter Mobilization by Telephone

MoveOn PAC is organizing get-out-the-vote phone parties—none are currently scheduled in Ann Arbor, but there’s an easy sign-up form for hosting a party:

Cell phones in hand, we’ll gather in living rooms across the country to have fun and contact voters together. Each phone party will have a list of folks to call and scripts to read while we’re on the phone.

All you need to do to host a party is offer your living room and print out a few things from our website. It’s that simple! You can create a “public” party, so others from your community can sign up, or keep it “private,” and limit it to you and your friends.

MSA’s Voice Your Vote is still taking volunteers for their Phonestorm voter mobilization:

To make sure the students we registered get to the polls, Voice Your Vote is manning the phones from 7:00 – 11:00 every night until the election. Sign up now to help us make calls in the Michigan Student Assembly Offices on the 3rd floor of the Michigan Union.

That’s all in my inbox right now; please add others in comments.

Comment [1]

Michigan Daily Won't Cover County Races

Posted by Murph on 31. October 2004

Larry Kestenbaum, blogger and Democratic Candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk/Registrar of Deeds, notes that the Michigan Daily has consciously chosen not to cover County-level races. You could, of course, consider Kestenbaum to be biased towards over-estimating the importance of the County races, being a candidate, but there are at least two County-level offices which are contested and could heavily impact student interests.

The County Clerk/Registrar is responsible for administration of local elections. This includes such things as choosing polling technology, training election workers, and overseeing recounts—issues which students have been shown to have a great deal of interest in. Two candidates are running for Washtenaw County’s Clerk/Registrar position:

Larry Kestenbaum is running as a Democrat, and notes that a Democrat hasn’t held the Clerk’s position since 1932. He’s challening incumbant Peggy Haines (no campaign website available), a Republican who has held the office for 14 years. See the Ann Arbor News’ article Incumbent clerk faces a challenger and bulletpoint summary of the candidates.

The County Prosecutor (or Prosecuting Attorney) is responsible for bringing charges under State law. The Prosecutor is responsible for determining whether a person should be charged, what crime he or she should be charged with, and what sentence should be sought. Again, students can probably be expected to be interested in this office.

John Stanowski is running as a Republican, challenging Democratic incumbent Brian Mackie. Mackie has held the Prosecutor’s office since 1992; Stanowski was a Washtenaw assistant prosecuting attorney until 1992, and has since worked for the City of Jackson as an assistant city attorney. Neither have campaign websites. See the Ann Arbor News’ article Rocky history for Mackie, Stanowski.

Both races are fairly well-commented on in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area blogs, which are fairly unanimously choosing Kestenbaum for the Clerk/Registrar position, but split between Mackie and Stanowski for Prosecutor. 90% Crud’s George Hotelling is collecting bloggers’ recommendations on these (and other), to be posted to ArborBlogs on Nov. 1. If the Daily won’t track these races, blogland will.

Under the Veil, Who's for Kerry?

Posted by MarkDilley on 31. October 2004

via The Nation

Driving down Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, a woman in a chador takes her hand off the steering wheel of her SUV to light a Marlboro. Through the half-open window she exhales smoke and Lebanese pop music. As she turns into the Dunkin’ Donuts her bumper reveals a frayed sticker: Vote Kerry/Edwards.

Summaries of Candidates' Planning Forums

Posted by Murph on 30. October 2004

As announced in previous posts, the Urban Planning Students Association put on two events this week at the Planning school for candidates to talk about planning issues. On Thursday night, Michigan Representative Chris Kolb, County Commissioner Conan Smith (not elected until Tuesday, but running unopposed), and City Councilmember Jean Carlberg and challengers Marc Reichardt (Green) and Rick Birkett (Libertarian) spoke to a group of about 15. On Friday night, Mayor John Hieftje and challenger Jane Lumm spoke before about 50 in their last joint appearance before the election. Expect the Michigan Daily to have an article on the events on Monday.

I took (excessive) notes at both events, which have been posted to the site library, with links at the bottom of this post—keep in mind that basically nothing in the notes is a direct quote, and there are places where I wasn’t sure what the candidates meant, so some things might not make sense and be my fault. (Unless it’s Birkett talking about “eminent domain”.)

    Summary of Thursday’s event:
  • Kolb noted that the Michigan House is interested in working towards regional public transit (commuter rail, bus-rapid-transit, etc), but that their transportation budgets don’t make it through the Senate. A Senator Johnson out of Oakland County is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and won’t support any kind of transit—in two years, she’s up for re-election, and hopefully the budget can be wrested out of her hands.
  • Carlberg said that it’s possible to increase housing density without it showing; Burns Park has a number of duplexes and multi-unit homes, and the neighbors don’t have any problems with them.
  • Reichardt feels developers who claim they can’t provide affordable housing are being disingenuous. Speaking from experience working for property management companies, he thinks they just need to be convinced to accept a slightly lower margin.
  • Smith and Reichardt are in favor of the Allen Creek Greenway; Carlberg expressed concerns about increased flooding and about providing industrial contaminants on some of the sites with an easy way to make it into the Huron River.
  • Smith and the three Council candidates all felt the Governor’s Cool Cities Initiative to be somewhat overhyped. (Kolb had to leave early and didn’t get a chance at this question.) They all thought the principle was good, but that, for example, the $100k grants recently handed out weren’t enough for anything meaningful to be done.
  • When asked about NIMBYism, all candidates said some stands on principles need to be made by politicians. Reichardt said that, as a Green, he’s dedicated to participatory process, but also would rather stand up for core values than keep an elected office by caving to pressure. Carlberg noted that she has dropped issues when pressured by neighborhood associations if she thought the issue to be doomed and have no chance of passing through the Council. Smith praised Carlberg for standing up for issues that the public has been “really freaked out about”.
  • Birkett suggested it might be a good idea to work with Ypsilanti to provide affordable housing there at lower cost than in Ann Arbor, rather than trying to provide it in Ann Arbor.
  • All of the candidates said they were in favor of instant-runoff voting and against the bad on porch couches.
    Summary of Friday’s event:
  • Both candidates thought the city had done well at providing affordable housing for families making 30-50% of the area’s median income, but needed to do more for families in the 50-80% range.
  • Hieftje said that allowing developers to pay into a city fund for housing, rather than forcing them to provide it in developments (a recent change the Council made) will allow the city to provide more units by building them in cheaper areas of town.
  • Lumm criticized the recent reorganization of the city’s planning staff, and said that removing the Planning Director and making the staff answerable to the City Administrator made the planners to vulnerable to politics. Hieftje denied that this made the planners any closer to the politics, and stressed that the change was made to streamline the development process.
  • Both stressed the need to listen to neighborhood input on proposed developments, but not to the point where the neighborhood effectively has veto power.
  • Both felt the Broadway Village project would be a good way to encourage a satellite downtown in Lower Town and rejuvenate that area. Lumm also suggested that North Main (I think she meant the area around/past Depot Street) could be an appropriate area to look at expanding downtown-style development.
  • Lumm accused the Mayor and current Council of showing “no courage whatsoever” when accessory-dwelling units were proposed; even though the planning staff and Commission and the Chamber of Commerce supported the idea, the Council let it evaporate under neighborhood pressure. Hieftje says they let the issue go because it wouldn’t have provided enough affordable housing units to make it worth fighting for.
  • Lumm said that ADUs were important enough that more effort should have been put into educating and advocating for them. Hieftje said that the neighborhoods were just too spooked, and the benefit not high enough, saying, “we can’t shove things down people’s throats without an overwhelming public good”.
  • Both support the proposed commuter rail link to Detroit. Hieftje likes the idea of having more development around the train station to take advantage of the rail. Lumm predicted intense neighborhood resistance to any such development. Both also like the idea of having commuter service on the north-south Ann Arbor Railroad line.
  • When asked about the idea that students are temporary residents and shouldn’t be allowed to drive local issues, both responded very negatively; Hieftje said that students are permanent residents as a group, “the face may change, but the slot stays the same”. Lumm said that students tended not to get very involved in larger planning issues, and were mostly concerned with individual quality-of-life issues like the Police Department’s “party patrol” and the porch couch ordinance. She said that some neighborhoods’ students are working with the homeowners and co-existing well, and that she’d like to expand this to other neighborhoods.

Several of the regular authors or commenters on this site were at the forum; I’m sure they’ll add anything important I’ve missed.

Links:


  • Edit: Michigan Daily, Nov 1: Housing, student issues top city political forum agenda

    Comment [5]

    • The First Underground Ann Arbor Film Festival Presents:

    Posted by MarkDilley on 30. October 2004

    EDIBLE REX: A PAGEANT OF FOOD AND FILM

    FRIDAY, NOV 5th, 8pm

    at Arbor Vitae – 336 1/2 State st. (above Wazoo Records and Ashley’s)

    featuring:

    provocative and beautiful short films by Ann Arbor’s smartest, hungriest artists and filmmakers from around the world with Musical Guest: Hot Meat for Young Lovers A FREE MEAL FOR EVERYONE Price of Entry: non-perishable food item to be donated to Food Gatherers (www.foodgatherers.org) BYOB

    “food first, then morals” ~ Bertolt Brecht

    co-sponsored by the Film & Video Student Association contact: foodforfilm@umich.edu

    Record Voter Turnouts Possible

    Posted by Murph on 29. October 2004

    In July, Republican Michigan State Rep. John Pappageorge was criticized for saying of the GOP, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.”

    In today’s Free Press, local election officials are predicting voter turnout of 75-80% in thier jurisdictions, beating 1972’s record of 72.7% turnout in Michigan. Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is predicting a lower figure, of only around 63% turnout, but local officials are saying that levels of absentee voting point to much higher interest.

    While high turnout typically benefits the Democratic Party, the high levels of absentee voting carry across the state, in rural areas that typically vote for the Republican Party, and not just in the Detroit area.

    Meanwhile, watch for Detroit’s most prominent recent contribution to national politics tomorrow night on Saturday Night Live, where Eminem will be, appropriately enough, the Devil’s Night musical guest.

    Comment [2]

    Green Machine Abandoning Hieftje?

    Posted by Murph on 29. October 2004

    An Ann Arbor News article, Is mayor changing his environmental stance? notes that Doug Cowherd, co-chair of the Huron Valley Sierra Club, and Bill Hanson, a former director of the Washtenaw Land Trust, are withdrawing their support from Mayor Hieftje. The two were key players in last year’s Greenbelt measure, and Cowherd was seen at the time to be the hand behind Hieftje’s throne, but now the pair accuse him of abandoning environmentalists and neighborhood associations, and of playing to big developers.

    Other local environmental groups, such as the Huron River Watershed Council and The Ecology Center, however, still support Hieftje. HRWC’s Laura Rubin noted that the Sierra Club is on the side of discouraging growth, while the Watershed Council supports increased density within the city. At a public hearing earlier this year for the Draft Northeast Area Plan, an HRWC representative went on record in support of the plan, saying that increased density within Ann Arbor would reduce development in other parts of the watershed, have a net positive environmental effect. At that hearing, the Sierra Club’s sole contribution was to say they had not looked closely enough at the plan to make comment.

    Ecology Center Director Mike Garfield, who was appointed to the greenbelt commission by the City Council, said what has changed is the political dynamic, with developers making the argument that there are environmental benefits to downtown high-rises.

    “My thing about Hieftje is he may not be as green as Doug (Cowherd) and he may not be as green as me,” Garfield said. “But he has championed some pretty big environmental programs, and I don’t think he has to apologize for his environmental record.”

    Hanson is also quoted in the article criticizing Hieftje for encouraging more people to get involved in the City’s planning discussions, claiming that Hieftje “used to view neighborhood groups as his base . . . Regrettably, it appears he now views them as the opposition.”

    Comment [4]

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