OVER THE PAST decade, the city’s Mayor and Council members whom he has endorsed, and with whom he has allied himself, have neglected to tend to the basic infrastructure needs of Ann Arbor’s various neighborhoods. Roads and sidewalks have deteriorated and neighborhood parks become overgrown in summer. Serious flooding in some Ward 4 neighborhoods is commonplace, sewage discharges into the river and water main breaks in our neighborhoods have become all-too-frequent, as well.
In the face of what can only be seen as long-term neglect of our city’s infrastructure, the Downtown Development Authority Board has pushed a politically-motivated and myopic effort to enhance its own revenues under the guise of improved downtown vitality. There is little danger of Ann Arbor’s downtown going to rack and ruin for the simple reason that the vitality of downtown Ann Arbor is inextricably bound to the vitality of its largest occupant, the University of Michigan. Incredibly, some of the members of the Board of the DDA have tried to give that organization credit for the downtown vitality brought to our city by the University of Michigan and its 40,000 students.
The politicization of the DDA Board, reflected in John Hieftje’s appointments to that Board of former City Council members Sandi Smith and Joan Lowenstein, has pitted the interests of the city’s downtown against those of the city’s neighborhoods. Unless City Council members strongly advocate for neighborhood interests and needs—and not all are prepared to do so—framing the downtown/neighborhood debate as an “either or” proposition has done little but open the door to the idea that downtown vitality trumps neighborhood zoning, planning and upkeep.
While hours of debate at City Council meetings have been devoted to downtown development, including DDA-supported attempts to place out-sized developments in near-downtown neighborhoods by seeking exceptions to zoning laws, no debate has ensued concerning the half a dozen raw sewage spills onto city streets as well as into the Huron River over the course of the past ten months. While Council members spent months discussing whether and how to modify the DDA’s tax capture, there was little debate about the impact of that tax capture on the city’s neighborhoods.
There has been a concerted effort on the part of the mayor’s political allies and appointees to paint as “micro-managers” those Council members who would question how proposed policy changes and expenditures might impact our city’s neighborhoods. Money for affordable housing is important. In 2009 Mayor John Hieftje, Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere and DDA Board president (then Ward 1 Council member) Sandi Smith made an empty promise to double the number of units of affordable housing. In fact the city has experienced a net loss in units of affordable housing under the tenures of Hieftje and Briere.
When it was proposed to give money from the sale of the former Ann Arbor Y lot to the Housing Commission, only Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm asked questions on behalf of the city’s neighborhoods. How, Lumm inquired, would the transfer of funds impact the city’s General Fund which, already stretched, pays for vital city services such as police and fire? She proposed an amendment that would have allocated half of the money from the sale of the Y lot to the General Fund. Her proposal was defeated.
The majority of new housing projects that include affordable housing add-ons are built within the DDA boundary. However, the money from the Y lot sale will not increase the number of units of affordable housing. As long as the structural integrity of Ann Arbor’s neighborhoods is pitted against a DDA led by individuals who openly ridicule neighborhood groups and supporters, taxpayers will continue to see crumbling roads, water main breaks, flooding and sewage spills in the city’s neighborhoods. The DDA has evolved into a tick, fattening itself on taxes captured while city services such as beat cops, leaf and Christmas tree collection are discontinued for the want of a few hundred thousand dollars.
Worse still, the downtown/neighborhood divide will continue to contribute to the political schizophrenia that local voters clearly find tedious and alienating. On the one side sits the Maximum Growth Party pushing top-down new urbanism. On the other side sits the Neighborhood Alliance Group focused on fiscal restraint and responsive government. In the middle sit the city’s residents waiting for roads to be paved in summer and plowed in winter.