EDITORIAL: Redevelopment Ready Community

THE MICHIGAN ECONOMIC Development Corporation (MEDC) has a program for Michigan cities called Redevelopment Ready Communities (RRC). It is a voluntary certification offered at no cost to the communities that elect to participate. According to the MEDC’s Community Development and Assistance website, “The RRC certification is a formal recognition that a community has a vision for the future and the fundamental practices in place to get there.”

The program requires cities to adopt a variety of best practices which include delegating final say so concerning proposed redevelopment and development decisions to a city’s planning commission—to appointed rather than elected officials.

The city of Dexter and that town’s elected officials were on the way toward becoming a Redevelopment Ready Community, at the urging of officials from Ann Arbor SPARK. On Mar. 26, 2014 Dexter’s Manager Donna Dettling announced that her community had been selected to participate in the program. The Treasurer of Dexter’s DDA called the RRC certification a “wonderful opportunity.”

Twelve months later, Dexter’s City Council voted down RRC certification and participation. The reason was simple: state officials who crafted the RRC program require communities to abolish their two-step zoning requirements. A two-step zoning process is predicated on a planning commission approving a site plan and then sending that recommendation to the city’s governing body for final approval. State officials told Dexter Council members RRC certification must place final approval in the hands of a city’s planning commission.

This is ostensibly an effort to streamline the development and redevelopment processes in order to benefit developers. However, as Ann Arbor residents have experienced with the appointed members of the Downtown Development Authority, there is the danger of creating a powerful entity which is allowed to control public policy, but whose members are not answerable to the voters. This has resulted in bitter disagreements between City Council and the DDA Board and even willful disregard for the city’s Charter and state law by the DDA.

DDA officials still refuse to provide required financial statements to the public and Council members relying on the excuse that other DDAs in Michigan do not provide the financial statements.

In Feb. 2014, members of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission refused to allow members of City Council to speak at a meeting, ignoring the fact that the Council members are city residents, as well as elected officials. The result was a discussion on ethics which included such absurdities as one Planning Commissioner suggesting Council members should be forbidden from communicating with the planning commissioners whom they appoint.

This suggestion was made despite the fact that Ann Arbor’s Planning Commission members (including the member who made the suggestion) routinely and privately communicate with some Council members, including the mayor who appoints and reappoints them, but not with others. There are members of the Planning Commission with no training or education in urban planning or land use, and who were appointed to the board by the former mayor as political payback.

Ann Arbor City Council, like Dexter’s, should opt not to participate in the MEDC’s RRC program. It requires cities to place far far too much power in the hands of political appointees.