by P.D. Lesko

Ann Arbor’s fire department is under-staffed, fire-related deaths have tripled, citizens routinely wait for an hour for police to show up to non-emergency calls, fees for water, sewer and solid waste have risen sharply. Taxpayers will fork over double for solid waste in 2013 than we paid a few years ago. Services, alas, have not been doubled. Items that used to be picked up curbside must now be hauled over to the reclamation center, and there is a fee to drop off materials. Single-stream recycling hasn’t worked out to be the gift from the Green Goddess promised by its “champions”: John Hieftje, Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall and Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke. Projected increases in collections came up 40 percent short. Residents gave a collective “Meh” to the recycling rewards program that cost six-figures, and it was discontinued. Recycle Ann Arbor came round asking for a multi-million dollar taxpayer bail-out, because the charter member of the local Industrial Green Complex had miscalculated its own collection costs. Never mind that Ann Arbor taxpayers already pay for the trucks, pay to maintain the trucks, and pay for gas for the trucks used by Recycle Ann Arbor. Local politicos crowed that single-stream recycling was going to save taxpayers millions.

Political allies on City Council gladly obliged with yes votes. The projected “savings” associated with the switch to single-stream recycling have evaporated.

In November 2009 Council was told there would be $450,000 in savings from the new Recycle Ann Arbor Contract. Did the savings materialize?  No. According to information presented to Council in July 2011, RAA contract savings were $262,000, but staff asked Council to increase the contract by $107,000. That would reduce the savings to $155,000.  If the city realizes the $262,000 in savings over the course of the contract, that is barely enough to repay the $2.6 million of city tax dollars invested in new trucks and carts for RAA. If Council votes to increase the RAA contract, the reduction in contract costs is not enough to pay for the carts and trucks before they need to be replaced, which means city taxpayers will lose money on the Recycle Ann Arbor contract that was supposed to result in a total savings of $4.5 million dollars. The payment to RAA to pick up our recycling carts is double the cost of wages and benefits paid to city employees to pick up the trash carts. From FY06 through FY10 it cost about $4 million more to pick up the recyclables, or about $800,000 per year.

This is a classic example of how the drones in the Hieftje Hive Mind Collective do finance. Mayor Pro Tem Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins told the local media in 2010 that some Council members are more numerically challenged than others. Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor comes immediately to mind. In an open letter about the city’s debt position regurgitated by AnnArbor.com, Taylor understated the city’s total debt by $215,000,000. First Ward Council member Sabra Briere (pictured, right) recently sent out a constituent newsletter in which she attempts to explain why she voted against hiring more police and fire, and instead voted to spend $300,000 on building a train station for Amtrak rather than on reinstating lost services.

In her e-newsletter, Briere does a not-so-subtle hatchet job on Second Ward Council member Jane Lumm, making it appear as though Lumm’s proposed budget amendments, which would have increased police and fire and restored lost services, were crafted by an idiot who had no real understanding of the city’s budget and the impact of the proposed amendments on the budget. Briere doesn’t refer to Lumm by name. Instead, she refers to the budget amendments crafted by Lumm. For instance, Briere writes:

There were some amendments that the Council rejected. Most significantly, the Council rejected an option to hire an additional five police officers using General Fund dollars.  The Council also rejected the opportunity to reinstate leaf collection.  You can ask why.

Why?

Both of these amendments were based on the premise that funds could be removed from a budget without a clear understanding of the impact of those changes. Prior to budget discussions, the staff provided ‘budget impact sheets’ that let members of Council see which projects and programs were slated for budget changes (from the previous year).  Any member of Council could ask about the impact these changes would have on delivering the services you expect.  Many members of Council asked; all of us received the responses.

But the amendments just offered a list of departments within funds that the City Administrator should look at for revenue to fund the amendments. Without an understanding (or clear guidance) on what the impact of these changes might be, discussion deteriorated into whether members of Council did or did not support the intent of the amendment.

This claim by Briere caught my eye: “Any member of Council could ask about the impact these changes would have on delivering the services you expect.  Many members of Council asked; all of us received the responses.” Briere writes that “many Council members asked” staff questions prior to spending $400 million dollars, prior to voting to make cuts to citizen services, and prior to torpedoing all of Lumm’s proposed budget amendments which would have restored cut services and increased funding for basic services.

After all, who would vote to spend $400 million dollars without asking a single question?

As it turns out, 7 of Ann Arbor’s 11 City Council members did just that. They did not email a single individual question to staff concerning the 343-page 2013 city budget. Sabra Briere, in a ham-handed effort to defend her own votes against spending for services, protects the rest of the Hive Mind Collective.

According to information released in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request, the first person who emailed city staff questions concerning the proposed 2013 budget was Stephen “Empty the Buckets” Lange Ranzini. Buckets Ranzini is not on City Council. He’s a local bank president who is proving to be a spectacularly huge pain in the political ash can. He has been harping about the fact that the city has over $100 million in surplus funds hoarded in various departmental budgets and a Rainy Day Fund into which Borg Queen Hieftje and his Hive Mind members refuse to dip.

Local news bloggers David Askins and Ryan Stanton each emailed once with questions.

Jane Lumm peppered staff with multiple questions about a variety of budget items: Christmas tree pick-up, the Wheeler Center Fund (There appears to be $1 million dollars missing from the Fund that the city’s CFO Tom Crawford can’t account for without using one of his lifelines to phone Tina Fey.), Municipal Center Fund, Fuller Road Station, a request for budget object codes, a follow up to Ranzini’s questions concerning Systems Planning fees, and a question about the cost of the Rapid Random Flashing Beacons installed in support of the new pedestrian cross-walk ordinance.

So who could spend $400 million dollars of your money without asking a single question?

Second Ward Council member Tony Derezinski, who is running for re-election despite having the worst attendance record of any Council member, didn’t ask any questions of city staff about the contents of the 343-page city budget or about any of the proposed budget amendments. I would say he’s been busy updating his campaign web site, but it’s still full of blank pages. Derezinski, like Briere, voted against increasing police and fire staffing, and instead voted in favor of spending on building a train station for Amtrak. Third Ward Council members Christopher Taylor and Stephen Kunselman didn’t email any questions. Fourth Ward Council members Margie Teall and Marcia Higgins didn’t, either. Fifth Ward Council members Mike Anglin and Carsten Hohnke didn’t feel the need to get more info., either.

John Hieftje asked one question: he wanted to know about his own travel budget.

Sabra Briere asked questions about the budget, but not about Lumm’s proposed budget amendments, which Briere writes in her newsletter she had to vote against because she didn’t have a clear picture of the “impact” of the proposals or “clear guidance” from staff about the impact of the proposals. Why Briere didn’t simply ask Jane Lumm for a clearer picture of the impact of her proposed budget amendments is a mystery. Why Briere didn’t just ask staff isn’t a mystery at all. One could posit that Sabra Briere never had any intention of voting in favor of Lumm’s proposed budget amendments to increase funding to police and fire.

First Ward Council member Sandi Smith asked two questions about parking enforcement in her role as the “representative” of her fellow members of the Downtown Development Authority. It’s a sure bet that Smith’s constituents don’t give a shitzu about parking enforcement. Instead, they might like to know why the potholes on streets throughout the Ward resemble impact craters on the moon, and why she voted in support of zoning the Ward’s parkland for use as a parking garage construction site.

Documents from city officials show that in total, Jane Lumm asked 8 of the 31 budget questions emailed to city staff concerning the 343-page, $400 million dollar budget. Sabra Briere asked about the same number of questions. Briere’s assertion that “many” members of City Council asked questions about the budget is simply false. She obviously knew “many” members of Council didn’t ask questions, because as she writes, “all of us received the responses.”

In her newsletter, Briere goes on to write:

Somedays budgets may (sic) my head spin, and the words that flow out of my mouth become more complex instead of clearer.  Let me try this again.  To restore curb-side leaf and holiday tree collection would cost us $383,000 for equipment (Solid Waste Fund balance) and $275,280 for annual costs (Solid Waste Fund).  The amendment proposed using funds from the recycling, compost and waste collection budget.  To hire additional police officers, the amendment recommended cutting various other budgets – such as Public Services (that’s streets, sewers, water, trash – and compost collection – what I call Public Works in my mind) and Human Resources (that’s the folks who manage the retirement and benefits programs plus help evaluate applicants for jobs).  I don’t know what the impact would be from asking Public Services to change the budget to reflect altered services to cover $275,280 in leaf collection and then cutting $192,265 to support additional police.  Unfortunately, neither did anyone else.

Translation: No one in the Hive Mind Collective could support Lumm’s amendments to expand and restore services, because Lumm had not explained what would happen if money were taken from various funds. Not only is this disingenuous, it is a deliberate effort to mislead the readers of the newsletter concerning Lumm’s proposals, and the fact that Council members, Briere included, neglected to ask city staffers questions about the possible impacts the changes could have on the various budget funds.

It’s not a secret that Sabra Briere has aspirations to serve as mayor. It should also not be a secret is that Sabra Briere has earned a reputation on Council as a duplicitous flip-flopper who can’t be trusted. She is, perhaps, best described as Hieftje Lite, providing constituents with none of the facts and twice the political spin. It’s not hard to believe the majority of our City Council members couldn’t be bothered to engage with staff concerning the disposition of the city’s $400 million dollar budget. Look at the roads. It is hard to swallow that Jane Lumm, who clearly engaged with staff, who brought pro-city, pro-services budget amendments to the table, is getting smeared for her trouble.