A2Politico: AADL Annual Reports Should Guide Your Votes on Proposals A and B

AADL Dir. Eli Neiburger says the the Downtown Library is “bursting at the seams” and we need to build a new, bigger one. The AADL Annual Reports say otherwise. Since 2018, total AADL door visits are down 25 percent, the number of items circulated is down 30 percent, the number of card holders is down (slightly), and the number of books and digital items in its collections have decreased.

by P.D. Lesko

Someone suggested to me that Proposals A and B on the August 2025 ballot are Mayor Chris Taylor’s very own Big Beautiful Ballot Questions. City Clerk Jackie Beaudry, when asked, estimated that the August vote will cost somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000.

Here is the text of the two ballot questions:

CITY OF ANN ARBOR PROPOSAL A:

AMENDMENT TO AUTHORIZE THE TRANSFER OF CITY OWNED PROPERTY TO THE ANN ARBOR DISTRICT LIBRARY 

Shall Section 14.3 of the City Charter be amended to authorize the City to sell its interests in 319 South Fifth Avenue or 326 South Division Street, commonly known as the Library Lane Parking Structure, only to the Ann Arbor District Library for the purpose of building a mixed-use development that includes additional library services, housing, retail, and programmable open public space? This proposal does not authorize new taxes. Adoption of this amendment is conditioned on adoption of City Proposal B at this election.

CITY OF ANN ARBOR PROPOSAL B:

AMENDMENT TO REPEAL SECTION 1.4 OF THE CITY CHARTER 

Shall Section 1.4 of the City Charter, currently titled Center of the City, be repealed? Adoption of this amendment is conditioned on adoption of City Proposal A at this election.

Local bank president Stephen Lange Ranzini has said, “No one is talking about the fact that this project will cost well over $150 million and if not properly executed could result in severe negative consequences for the AADL and taxpayers in general. This is not a reason not to do the project however the team at the AADL is highly unlikely to have the skill set to pull this off with elan. Also, the conference center aspect of the project will assuredly lose money each year forever and will require higher taxes to fund those losses.”

Former County Commissioner Vivienne Armentrout has pointed out that, “This particular outcome (Proposal A) from the Library is not promised, just a suggestion. All of this is a hypothetical outcome. Read the enabling resolution. It only gives the Administrator the right to bargain. And there are no contracts, budgets, or serious commitments on the part of the AADL.”

Putting the Administrator of the AADL system in charge of the development of a huge mixed use development is trusting a guy with a B.A. in Archaeology to develop housing, retail, and programmable open space. No offense to Eli Neiburger, but he wouldn’t be anyone’s top pick to develop a $150 million mixed use project. Neither would an arts educator (AADL Board member Jim Leija), a campaign strategist (AADL Board member Catherine Hadley), a social worker/poet (AADL Board member Onna Solomon), an AI Google Ads salesman (AADL Board member Aidan Sova), or a corporate partnership manager (AADL Board member Lisa Campbell).

The AADL trustees were not elected to oversee real estate development; they were elected because they’re library enthusiasts who ran for office on their love of our library system, their (varied) abilities to supervise one person (Neiburger) and oversee library policy and the budget. I suspect had the above library trustees run on the platform of revoking a Charter amendment so the present library could be demolished and a huge multi-use development put in its place, none of them would have been elected.

Those library enthusiasts are at the helm of a library system that is welcoming fewer people, circulating fewer items, and issuing (slightly) fewer library cards. Naturally, the obvious solution is to ignore the patrons’ ennui that is documented in black and white in the organization’s own Annual Reports, and move into real estate development.

Not that Eli Neiburger is RFK, Jr., but his unrealistic, unqualified support (and the unqualified support of the trustees) of these ballot proposals may be likened to some of RFK Jr.’s implausible pronouncements and crankster promises.

We’ll revoke a Charter Amendment passed in November 2018, sell land to to the AADL for $1, land which voters instructed elected officials in 2018 they wanted to be open space in perpetuity, and presto-change-o, we’ll have more market rate housing and “programmable open public space.” Lucky us.

In 2018, voters instructed elected officials to create a central park next to the Downtown Library, and since 2018 Mayor Chris Taylor has been giving the electorate the proverbial finger. Proposal A and Proposal B are the Mayor and City Council all giving the electorate the proverbial finger.

Former City Council member Jeff Hayner said about the sale for $1 of the land currently protected by a Charter amendment passed by voters in 2018: “This is a transfer of public land and assets to private development, for $1, with no say whatsoever as to what is built, or who builds it, or what it contains. Just another in a long line of wealth transfer schemes city council is running.”

One of Mayor Taylor’s fervent supporters and a supporter of Proposals A and B, is a South African transplant cut from the same cloth as Elon Musk. In support of three dozen Proposal A and B supporters (including the Mayor) who marched in the city’s Fourth of July Parade, in a Facebook post to the Ann Arbor Politics page, the man wrote, “It was so nice to hear all the people cheering for a bigger, better library during the parade today!”

Make the AADL Great Again. Where are the red baseball caps?

According to Taylor’s personal Elon, Proposals A and B will bring us “the best library we can get.” It’s a say-nothing promise similar to the promise that DOGE would save taxpayers billions and bring us the best federal government we can get. In April 2023, the same man told City Council, “[A resolution to approve vendors on the library lot is] a squandering of the city’s limited resources.” He probably flounced out of South Africa in a high dudgeon (in “groot verontwaardiging”) because Capetown’s elected officials squandered that city’s limited resources on food trucks and food vendors.

In 2012, the then members of the Board of the AADL put a bond question to the voters for $65 million to demolish and replace the Downtown Main Library on its current parcel. The bond proposal failed when 55 percent of voters said no.

The sales pitch this time is that this development will result in “no new taxes.”

The AADL is the beneficiary of a perpetual millage paid by taxpayers. That millage raised $20.4 million last year, according to the AADL’s 2024 Annual Report.

Library Dir. Neiburger’s Annual Reports don’t present data year-over-year so it’s difficult to compare, say, the total number of active library cards in 2024 with the total in 2019. You have to pull up both reports and toggle back and forth between them.

For example, in 2024 the AADL Annual Report states the library circulated 4.6 million items. In 2019, the Annual Report shows the AADL circulated 6.3 million items.

Neiburger’s 2024 Annual Report talks about a library “bursting at the seams.” Neiburger goes on to announce that “we’ve determined that the Downtown library has passed the point where current major investment in the current structure is not a responsible use of public funds.” Maybe instead of a new building, AADL needs a new director who is less inclined to push ecological regressivism.

The City’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation headed by Dr. Missy Stults is introducing residents to the ecologically progressive concept of the “circular economy.” Reuse is now one of the City’s main goals in its battle to reduce carbon emissions. Dir. Neiburger and the Trustees are content to demolish an entire building, to send tens of thousands of tons of materials to the landfill, and then build new.

A Library “Bursting at the Seams?” Not According to the AADL’s Annual Reports

While Dir. Neiburger may say the Downtown library is “bursting at the seams,” his own Annual Reports tell a different story. For example, Neiburger’s 2024 Annual Report touts the increase in the number of participants in AADL programs. In the 2024 Annual Report Neiburger writes, “event attendance was up 44 percent.”

In 2023, the AADL put on 1,320 programs attended by 92,077 participants. In 2024, the AADL put on 1,874 programs attended by 132,087 participants. Participation is up, up, up. Well, not exactly. In 2019, the Annual Report shows the AADL put on 2,549 programs and attracted 168,998 participants (66.29 participants, on average, per program).

In reality, the cost of increasing the number of programs in 2024 netted one additional participant, per program, on average. In 2023, 69.75 (let’s say 70) participants, on average, attended each of the 1,320 programs. In 2024, 70.48 (let’s say 71) participants, on average, attended each of the 1,874 programs.

In 2019, the programming budget was $442,387. In 2024, the programming budget was $864,449, almost doubled from 2019 and the number of participants, on average per program between 2019 and 2024, increased by just four people per program.

Neiburger’s return on the investment of an additional $422,000 in public money on programming should be questioned by the arts educator, campaign strategist, social worker/poet, AI Google Ads salesman and corporate partnership manager who are occupying the seats at the AADL Board table.

In 2019 (Neiburger was the Asst. Dir. of the AADL), that AADL Annual Report pegged door visits at 1.76 million, down from 1.8 million in 2018. The 2024 Report shows door visits are up from 1.25 million in 2023 to 1.44 million in 2024, but still down significantly from 1.8 million in 2018.

Comparing 2019 to 2024, door visits are down over 20 percent, and the number of items circulated (one of the main services of any library) has plummeted by almost 30 percent. The number of books in the collection has dropped from 350,000 in 2019 to 336,000 in 2024. In 2019, the AADL held around 149,000 digital materials in its collection and as of 2024, the number of items in the library’s digital collection is around 140,000.

The credibility of the 2024 Annual Report door visit data is undermined by the fact that the percentage of door visits to each branch out of the total door visits is exactly the same between 2023 and 2024. While the number of door visits rose by 190,000 from 2023 to 2024, not a single branch’s percentage of visitors rose or fell as a percentage of the increase in total door visits.

For example, in 2023 the Downtown Main Branch had 395,588 total door visits and those visits accounted for 32 percent of the total 1.22 million door visits. In 2024, the Downtown Main Branch had 462,229 door visits and those visits accounted for exactly 32 percent of the total 1.44 million door visits. Likewise, the Westgate branch tallied 398,452 door visits in 2023, accounting for 32 percent of the total 1.22 million. In 2024, the Annual Report shows the number of door visits at the Westgate branch rose to 463,256, accounting for exactly 32 percent of the 1.44 million door visits.

When I brought this up to the AADL’s Communications and Marketing Manager Richard Retyi, he said in an email, “We use an industrial door count system with sensors above every public entrance to count each heat blob as it moves into the library. It’s not surprising to us that the breakdown changes proportionally and so little. Library use is pretty consistent and changes gradually.”

A Tale of Two Public Libraries

The public library in Berkeley, CA has a main library and four branches. It serves a local population of 118,000. In 2024, the Berkeley Public Library had 143,000 card holders. The Berkeley Public library has 457,000 books, as compared to the AADL’s 325,000 books. While the AADL has around 135,000 digital items (CDs, DVDs, etc….), the Berkeley Public Library has 1.3 million items in its digital collection.

On the other hand, in 2024 the AADL offered 1,874 programs which greatly outpaced the Berkeley Public Library’s offerings of 207 programs.

in 1980, Berkeley voters passes a special library tax which must be renewed by voters every four years (similar to the millage that supports the AADL which is perpetual so voters never have an opportunity renew or revoke it). In 2024, that special library tax provided the Berkeley Public Library with an $24 million budget.

Eli Neiburger’s performance and the statistics in his Annual Reports are best viewed in perspective.

The last Strategic Plan adopted by the AADL Trustees is dated 2020. It’s concerning for Dir. Neiburger and the AADL Trustees to support Proposal A and Proposal B without an updated strategic plan that includes a roadmap that outlines the financial and operational impacts of Proposal A and Proposal B on the mission of the AADL.

In her 2020 Letter From the Director, Neiburger’s former boss Josie Parker wrote: “AADL intends to retain control over our own destiny. The library benefits from the hard-earned confidence of the public; a perpetual millage that provides assurance of long-term sustainability; a dedicated corps of volunteers, donors, and supporters; and countless other assets. We believe we serve these interests most faithfully when we remain above the fray of any current or future political fractures. We are mindful of our mandate to steward public funds responsibly, and everything we undertake will align with this value, including the way we operate, maintain, and upgrade our facilities.”