by P.D. Lesko

Former Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo was not popular. He had earned a reputation among constituents and city staffers as being nasty. One police officer, when asked about Rapundalo prior to the November 2011 general election in which Rapundalo was ousted from office, said with a chuckle, “Oh, we don’t like that Rapundalo.” While running for re-election, Rapundalo did not link from his campaign website directly to local news coverage of his race. He created PDF documents of the news articles and posted those to his site. One look at the comments in response to AnnArbor.com articles about Rapundalo and it was clear why the Council member chose not to link directly to the pieces. The comments about Rapundalo were often scathing, even in response to AnnArbor.com’s October 2011 endorsement of the MichBio CEO. One AnnArbor.com commenter described Rapundalo “…a cancer to this city and to the people of it. If you have any doubts, talk to him sometime. That is, if he’ll even give you the time of day. He’ll speak to you when it benefits him. Otherwise, you don’t amount to much…”

Ouch.

Second Ward Council member Tony Derezinski is the closest thing to a Good Ole Boy there is on Ann Arbor City Council.

Derezinski, who was a state senator (pictured right in 1977) when Gerald Ford was in the White House, has voted in lock-step with Hieftje and his Hive Mind Collective. Derezinski is a skilled panderer and a capable glad-hander. At 70 Derezinski is the oldest member of City Council and it shows. There have been complaints he is unengaged during meetings. In videos of Council meetings, Derezinski can be seen making repeated trips to the Council snack room while meetings are in session. Since 2008 he has compiled one of the worst attendance records of any of the 11 Council members. Likewise, since 2008 Derezinski has missed scores of meetings of the Council committees to which he has been assigned—again, more than almost any of his colleagues.

Despite his lackluster attendance record and lack of engagement at meetings, Tony Derezinski not only wants to be re-elected to City Council, AnnArbor.com recently ran a piece that suggested 70-year-old Derezinski wants to run for Mayor in 2014.

The 2011 election was the first ever during which Democrat Stephen Rapundalo was forced to field questions from the mainstream media about his past Republican candidacies, as well as the fact that he had openly supported the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2010, as opposed to Democrat Virg Bernero. Unlike Rapundalo, Tony Derezinski (today, pictured left) never ran for office as a Republican, nor did he donate to Rick Snyder’s campaign. Like Rapunds, however, Derezinski donated nothing to Bernero’s campaign. Derezinski’s inner-Republican can be traced to his 2008 campaign finance forms, where he accepted donations from many Ann Arbor Republicans and Democrats who went on to support and donate to Republican Rick Snyder in 2010.

Democrat Derezinski’s 2008 campaign finance forms document donations from then Chair of the Michigan Republican Party Ron Weiser ($500), his wife, Eileen ($500), and Mark Boonstra (now Chair of the Washtenaw County Republican Committee). Dem Rene Greff, co-owner of Arbor Brewing Company, donated to Derezinski in 2008, and went on to donate almost $4,000 to Snyder in 2010. University of Michigan Musical Society Director Ken Fischer also donated to Derezinski in 2008 and to Snyder ($300) in 2010.

As well as having attendance and engagement issues, Derezinski is trapped under much of the same political baggage that cost Rapundalo his seat.

For example, months after a 40-year friend sent a letter to the editor of the Ann Arbor News that referred to Derezinski as “a man of great integrity with a strong moral compass,” it was revealed that Derezinski has been misusing email during open Council meetings to make fun of constituents, give out awards for pandering to the public, allegedly violate the Open Meetings Act, and rig votes, according to reporting by the Ann Arbor News.

Derezinski voted to spend $50 million to build the new city hall. He also voted to construct the Fifth Avenue underground parking garage, which will be paid for by property tax dollars and not parking revenues, as Hieftje and others initially told the public.

In 2010, Derezinski told the Michigan Daily he favored a city income tax. In April 2011, Derezinski told the Ann Arbor Observer that he thought it was “more than fair” for taxpayers to pay a city income tax.

Derezinski, like Rapundalo, has consistently supported the diversion of over $2.2 million in tax dollars (including money from the road millage and utilities) for Public Art. Like Rapundalo, Derezinski has also consistently refused to vote to reduce the amount of money given over to the Percent for Art program.

The failed Fuller Road project enjoyed the full support of both Rapundalo and Derezinski. It has been estimated that officials wasted over $4 million dollars in fees to consultants, architects, etc… on an attempt to build a parking garage for the University of Michigan on a river-front parcel of parkland.

Derezinski has consistently voted in favor of cuts to both police and fire staffing levels, as had Rapundalo.

Rapundalo and Derezinski voted to approve the wildly unpopular pedestrian crossing ordinance.

Derezinski, like Rapundalo, pushed to outsource operations of Huron Hills Golf Course, enraging Ward 2 residents who formed a neighborhood group, printed up signs and pressured Council into dropping the plans to hand over operations to the company of a man whom Hieftje had conveniently appointed to the Golf Courses Advisory Task Force.

Rapundalo and Derezinski spent almost 12 months and thousands of dollars of staff time on a failed effort to ban cell phone use while driving.

Pandering, of course, is predicated on a listener who, well, is willing to be fooled. Given the fact that the Michigan Daily’s editorial board has repeatedly fallen for the mile-wide, mile-deep malarky fed to them by Hieftje and his cronies, it’s easy to conclude the students need some serious remedial work. Over the past six years, the Daily editorial board has not consistently measured actual political progress against the many political promises made to them by local politicos.

In 2010, Derezinski told the Daily’s editorial board he was in favor of redistricting the city. Can you spell LMFAO? Derezinski can, and he probably did after he left the meeting with the U of M student newspaper editorial board.

More pandering? The Michigan Daily endorsed Derezinski in 2010 in part, because, he was in favor of increasing the miles of bike lanes. Sounds good, huh? However, since 2008, when Derezinski joined Council, the total number of miles of bike lanes in Ann Arbor has fallen. How?

In September 2009, John Hieftje and Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke announced at a City Council meeting there were “48 miles of bike lanes.” That same month, city officials, sent out a press release published, as usual, verbatim by AnnArbor.com in which officials trumpet, “City officials announced today that Ann Arbor has increased its on-road bike-lane system by 500 percent this decade – going from 8 to 48 lane miles. “That more than surpasses the city’s goal to increase the amount of on-road bike lanes by 300 percent in five years,” Mayor John Hieftje said in a press release.

According to the City of Ann Arbor website as of 2012, “The City of Ann Arbor added over 10 miles of on-road bike lanes in 2010-2011, bringing the total to 36.2 miles.” That means, of course, when Hohnke, Hieftje and Derezinski were telling the public and The Michigan Daily editorial board there were 48 miles of bike lanes—with big plans for more— and that Hieftje’s administration has increased the miles of bike lanes by “500 percent,” there were, actually, 26.2 miles of bike lanes, 21.8 miles fewer than was claimed in 2009.

Tony Derezinski faces multiple challengers this time around. Like Rapundalo, who began reaching out in earnest to constituents as soon as it became clear he was going to be challenged in the election, Derezinski launched a new “blog” on February 19, 2012. It’s the first time he has bothered to update his website since August 5, 2008 (he ran unopposed in 2010). He’s also hosting a Ward 2 meeting at his home in February to “update” constituents.

Against candidates who can raise money and who stake out positions in favor of reasonable spending, responsive government and engaged representation, it’s quite possible Tony Derezinski could find himself voted out of office despite being a perfectly pleasant fellow.