Residents Say “No Go” to Mayor’s Plan To Pay For County-Wide & Regional Transit With City Millage

by P.D. Lesko

The public speaker, an older woman who rides the bus regularly, recounted a conversation with a friend who lives outside of Ann Arbor: “My friend said to me that she wished the AATA buses would run near her house so she could take them. I said to her, ‘Well then, you should pay for a bus system like I do.'”

Her sentiment was a common thread during many comments by 40 people who came to speak before City Council last night during a scheduled Public Hearing about whether Ann Arbor should fund county-wide transportation with $8-$10 million in millage money paid by the city’s residents.

Another speaker, an Ann Arbor resident, was mindful of the fact that Ann Arbor faces “tough economic times,” and that perhaps now was not the best time to try to implement a pie-in-the-sky “half a billion dollar” transit plan. The speaker also reminded the City Council that the AATA Board member in charge of rustling up funding for the plan was cavalier about the possible costs. Jesse Bernstein, when asked in August 2011 what level of millage it would take to fund the first five years of AATA’s transit master plan vision, replied: “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Bernstein the former CEO of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, has a Master’s degree in Social Work and was appointed to the AATA Board by John Hieftje in 2008. In a January 16, 2012 piece A2Politico revealed information that might explain Bernstein’s cavalier attitude toward finance and taxpayer costs:

Anyone who has studied the tax returns of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce—which Bernstein headed—may wonder what exactly qualifies him as a funding “expert.” Bernstein spent years losing money at the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, according to tax documents filed with the IRS. In 2007, 2008 and 2009 (Bernstein resigned in late-June 2009), the Chamber of Commerce lost money and gross revenues fell from $1.2 million and $975,000. Incredibly, in 2008 under Bernstein’s leadership, the group spent 70 percent of  its $1.03 million in revenue on salaries, benefits, travel, and office space. Under Jesse Bernstein’s leadership, the money-losing local Chamber of Commerce was in the business of being in business to provide Bernstein with a job and a six-figure salary and faux cred.

Bernstein recently voted in favor of AATA’s latest budget which allows the bus service to run a deficit, and to continue to spend money on consultants to tweak the new transit plan, and on bus, radio and television advertising to sell a half a billion dollar pipe dream to taxpayers. The budget also continues to allocate money to the WALLY, not so coincidentally.

Bernstein pointed out that 22 communities were interested in participating. He did not mention that AATA already provides service to two-thirds of the county’s 370,000 residents.

Over the past week, Council members Anglin (Ward 5), Kunselman (Ward 3) and Lumm (Ward 2), have been public and vocal in their support of city-wide transit paid for with Ann Arbor’s millage money. On the other side of the debate sit John Hieftje and his hand-picked members of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority Board of Directors—two of whom do not live in Ann Arbor (David Nacht and Eli Cooper). Hieftje, his supporters on Council, and political pals on the AATA Board favor a county-wide, as well as regional commuter train system funded with Ann Arbor’s millage money.

53rd District State Representative Jeff Irwin is pro improved and expanded transit. He spoke at City Council, and while calling the current AATA service “horrible” in some respects (night-time and week-end service), he said he hoped elected officials would be able to “thread the needle,” and come up with an expanded county-wide and regional transit system that works.

Ypsilanti Mayor Paul Schreiber showed up to lobby for continued hand-outs from Ann Arbor taxpayers.

While Ypsilanti passed a 1-mill tax that “goes toward transit service,” according to Schreiber, it does not come close to covering the actual cost of the present service, and certainly not the cost of planned increases in service between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Schreiber said: “What this countywide plan does, it stabilizes our service.” In other words, Ann Arbor taxpayers would provide service to Schreiber’s constituents at a deep discount for the long haul.

Many Ann Arbor residents, however, told Council they would prefer to see the service stabilized and improved in their own city.

On August 14, 2011 Ann Arbor environmental activist Rita Mitchell published a detailed analysis of John Hieftje’s transportation plans in AnnArbor.com. In that piece Mitchell writes, “While looking forward, let’s prepare for fewer cars clogging our city, [but] let’s avoid a financial train wreck….The community deserves more than pro forma presentations. A robust, interactive public discussion with council members is needed before undertaking this precedent-setting proposal.” She was writing about Hieftje’s desire to lease—at less than $50,000 per year—a piece of river front land on Fuller Road valued at $4-$10 million dollars to the University of Michigan for a parking garage. The lease arrangement conveniently avoids a public vote, as the Charter states residents must vote on the disposal of parkland.  However, Mitchell’s analysis could certainly apply to Hieftje’s desire to “repurpose” Ann Arbor millage money to pay for commuter trains, county-wide and regional transit, as well.

Mitchell is a retired Health Information Analyst (tip o’ the keyboard to Rita Mitchell) at the University of Michigan, and has brought those skills to bear in her support of city-wide transit and calls for improvements to that system. Mitchell started out her comments at the Public Hearing by looking inquisitively at Council members and asking which of them had taken the bus to the meeting. Council members, of course, would not take the bus, because week-night service ends before their meetings do.

Her point well made, Mitchell went on to support transit but expressed several serious reservations about the 4-Party plan.

Other environmental activists were there. A representative of the Ecology Center spoke in favor of Hieftje’s plan. Mike Garfield, who heads the Ecology Center, also heads an organization to which Hieftje and members of Council have steered no bid contracts and over $32 million dollars in public money.

Many of those who spoke in favor of “repurposing” the AATA millage have either direct or indirect political connections to Hieftje and public money. Richard Sheridan, who sits with Hieftje on the Board of Ann Arbor SPARK, urged Council to provide transportation options. Sheridan spoke in glowing terms of the transportation system in Portland, Oregon a city of some 750,000  residents. Several of those who spoke in favor of the 4-Party agreement do not live in Ann Arbor or pay the millage.

One Ann Arbor resident who spoke in favor of the 4-Party agreement was Chuck Warpehoski, husband of GetDowntown Executive Director Nancy Shore. As head of the Interfaith Council of Peace and Justice, prior to the Public Hearing Warpehoski sent a mass email to members  of the group, a non-profit which exists to “empower people of faith and people of conscience in the Washtenaw County/Ann Arbor, Michigan area to act on their moral and religious values” urging them to support the Mayor’s transportation proposal. The GetDowntown program encourages alternative transportation, and is funded by the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, and the City of Ann Arbor.

Eppie Potts, a former member of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission spoke, as well. Along with Mitchell and other speakers, Potts asked why the evening and weekday service in Ann Arbor was so abysmal. “Is it a lack of funding?” Potts asked, rhetorically. Her point was clear: before planning to spend $600,000,000 to expand service, AATA should provide excellent service within the city.

John Floyd, a Republican candidate for City Council is 2010, pointed out that there has been “misinformation” spread concerning the fact that the 4-Party agreement is little more than a “framework” to allow AATA staffers and county officials to move forward in fleshing out the exact details of what a regional system would look like. Floyd, a CPA, pointed out that the 4-Party agreement is a contractual obligation between the city and the other participating cities and groups, rather than a non-binding “framework.” Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor, an entertainment lawyer, has persisted in claiming that the contract is little more than a “framework” in emails to constituents, as well as during Council meetings.

One of the most interesting developments at the meeting happened at the very beginning. John Hieftje, whom the Ann Arbor News editorial board characterized as a politico who “sprints to accept praise,” took pains to explain that the proposal to repurpose Ann Arbor transit millage money was not his, but rather the work of the Board members of AATA. It was an attempt to distance himself from his own plan—a plan that is becoming a political hot potato, now that residents are asking questions and demanding answers. Hieftje was being utterly disingenuous, because members of the AATA Board of Directors are hand-picked by Hieftje who, according to a former AATA Board member, has been pushing commuter trains and trying to repurpose AATA’s millage money for almost a decade.

City Council voted voted to postpone its decision on whether to approve the contract which would bind city money and assets to a virtually irrevocable county-wide transit program, and put that money and assets at the disposal of a 15 member county-wide board, controlled by out-county residents. The item will be back sometime in February 2012.