by P.D. Lesko

A Ward 2 neighborhood association packed the house at Thurston Elementary School on Wednesday October 26, 2011 for a candidate forum between incumbent Ann Arbor City Council member Stephen Rapundalo (left) and challenger Jane Lumm (below), a former Second Ward Council member who served during the 1990s and who is looking to retake the seat she once held. Anyone who went expecting scintillating political debate was disappointed. Both candidates are prone to long-form answers that frequently entered the realm of overly wonky. However, those present managed to stay engaged.

The school library was packed with about 45 local political insiders, press, and neighborhood association members. Second Ward Council member Tony Derezinski was the only member of the City Council who attended, and he nipped out well before the event was finished. What he missed, however, were many of the most interesting exchanges between Rapundalo and Lumm —answers to constituent questions that make the political differences between the candidates very clear.

The questions, submitted in writing by those who attended the event, were sometimes grouped and paraphrased by the moderator, who read them to the candidates. The questions touched on the political high points:  the Percent for Art Program, the city’s budget woes, unfunded pension liabilities, and the proposed Fuller Road parking garage—on which city officials have spent several million dollars despite never having taken a vote on whether to enter into the 75-year lease with the University of Michigan. There were questions about the candidates’ views concerning contracts recently negotiated with unionized employees.

AnnArbor.com has, over the past several months, repeatedly characterized Rapundalo, the Chair of the City Council’s Labor Committee, as having played a major role in shaping contracts between the city and its unionized employees. Reporter Ryan Stanton last did so in a piece posted on October 26th. Stanton writes, “Rapundalo, as chairman of the council’s labor committee, has pushed for concessions from the police and fire unions to help avoid some of the layoffs.” Asked a direct question at the candidate event about the role Council members play in such negotiations, Rapundalo found himself forced to admit that he has never played any direct role in negotiations with the city’s unions, contrary to claims on his web site and assertions AnnArbor.com has made as well, including in their recent endorsement of Rapundalo.

Rapundalo explained that city officials hire people Rapundalo referred to as “so-called experts” to do the actual negotiations. Jane Lumm, smiling, shrugged and said that when she’d served on Council’s Labor Committee, they’d relied on hired negotiators, but that it seemed that Council members on the Labor Committee today had a more direct hand in negotiating. “At least that’s how it’s been made to appear,” she said with a glance at Rapundalo, who stared down at the table. Both Rapundalo and Lumm said that they favored cutting the cost of benefits for the city’s 710 workers. Lumm, however, said that while she welcomed recently approved changes to the Pension Ordinance, more changes needed to be made. In specific, she mentioned the fact that city employees will still enjoy pensions that pay defined benefits. This implied she’d like to examine the possibility of the city moving to a defined contribution plan for its retirees. She also pointed out that the recent changes to the Pension Ordinance made had been first recommended in 1994, and again in 2006, shortly after Rapundalo was first elected to Council.

“I pushed very, very hard on Council to make sure union contracts were reasonable.” She called herself “a pain in the neck,” who frequently sent materials to her colleagues concerning the need to lower employee benefit costs.

Both candidates, for the most part, were genial, if a bit testy at times. Rapundalo was rattled when the audience laughed at his repeated attempts to portray Lumm as having been on City Council in 2000 (she ended her service in 1998) even after she corrected him. He wagged his finger at his opponent, and chastised the audience. A member of the audience shouted out at Rapundalo, “Stop lying.” Lumm, in fact, confronted inaccuracies spread by the incumbent about her voting record and political stances. She characterized the incumbent’s distortion of her record as “laughable.” Council member Rapundalo has refused repeated requests from A2Politico to comment on the accuracy of his campaign web site. On October 3, 2011, A2Politico posted a piece that revealed Rapundalo’s campaign site makes numerous allegations against Lumm which are contradicted by the very meeting minutes he footnotes, but to which the site does not provide links or downloadable copies of.

In answer to a question about how city officials could claim that the city’s finances are in good shape despite unfunded pension obligations topping $215,000,000, Stephen Rapundalo told the audience what has become the stock line of City Council incumbents: Ann Arbor is in pretty good shape considering that this is the “worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.” Lumm countered that during the 90s, when she served on Council, the pension had been fully funded, and future retiree health care obligations 50 percent funded. Currently, the city’s future retiree health care fund is underfunded by 70 percent.

“Compare that to today,” Lumm told audience members. “I welcome the comparison.”

Rapundalo, for his part, characterized Lumm’s tenure on City Council as a time of “inaction and bickering.” He went on to tell audience members: “We don’t want to bring that back to Council.” He attacked her, her tenure on Council in the 90s, and the union contracts approved by City Council members in the 90s (including John Hieftje, presumably, who was elected to Council in 1999) as being the reasons for the unionized employee contract “mess we’re cleaning up today.”

John Hieftje, when confronted in February of 2010 with an AnnArbor.com analysis that concluded city employees enjoyed benefit packages that were more expensive and required less of an employee contribution than most other cities in the state, responded to AnnArbor.com by claiming: “We are still struggling with labor contracts that were heavily one-sided that were decided back in the ’70s and ’80s. We’ve been working very hard to try to do more. Employees are contributing more to their health benefits, but not nearly what they need to be.”

Another area where the candidates demonstrated clear difference of political opinion was in response to a question about their positions on the Fuller Road parking garage the University of Michigan wants to build on riverside parkland. Stephen Rapundalo characterized the project as one that is “crucial to the economic development prospects,” “the future,” of the city. Lumm, on the other hand, called the envisioned intermodal station complete, a fantasy. Rapundalo claimed that “several hundred million dollars” have already been set aside for the project. According to state and federal officials, that money is for track improvements on the Detroit-Chicago line, and track purchases, not a for building a train station in Ann Arbor. A recent $2.8 million dollar allocation by the federal officials is supposed to be for an environmental impact study, not capital costs, according to an official from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Rapundalo went on to offer assurances that the project would not require money from the General Fund, the account that pays for services such as police and fire.

Rapundalo’s assertion contradicts a piece posted on August 14, 2011 to AnnArbor.com. In that piece the author writes:

On funding, the mayor states that, “The FRS Phases I and II can be built without any significant upfront cost to the city.” What about at least $700,000 already paid to consultants, plus the equivalent in city overhead cost for legal, engineering, administrative and planning staff time spent on FRS to-date? Are these costs not significant?

Additional associated costs for Phase I, the parking structure, include: $1.3 million for recently approved sewer, water and storm drain relocations for FRS, that were not rated as high priority Capital Improvements, unspecified costs for significant roadway changes to Fuller Road, more than $2 million for design and construction of a roundabout at Fuller/Maiden Lane/E. Medical Center Drive, the unidentified value of more than 10 acres of parkland in the Huron River valley and the destruction of trees and other natural features.

For her part, Lumm focused on the fact the city needs a “business plan,” for the Fuller Road parking garage project. She looked over at Rapundalo and asked earnestly, “Is there one? If there is, please share it with all of us. I’d love to see it.” She has said repeatedly that there are too many unanswered questions concerning the financial commitment necessary to see the project to completion. Finally, Lumm pointed out the obvious: while Rapundalo was referring to the project as a multi-modal, train station, it is, in reality, little more than a parking garage for U of M.

Later in the discussion, Rapundalo mentioned he’d been pushing for what he termed an “economic development plan” for the city. Former Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden ran for re-election in 2009 amidst an email scandal that caught several Council members, including Rapundalo, rigging votes and making fun of constituents via email during open Council meetings. In 2009, Greden claimed that he was pushing for an “economic development plan” for Ann Arbor, as well. In fact, Greden claimed an economic development plan was imminent. Rapundalo, who chairs the Financing Authority that has funneled millions of tax dollars skimmed from the Ann Arbor Public Schools to Ann Arbor SPARK, suggested there could be economic development synergy between Ann Arbor SPARK and the city.

In her closing statement, Lumm said she’s asking for support for her campaign in order to get “the basics right,” to refocus city spending on services and to help city government connect more effectively with residents and neighborhoods. Rapundalo told audience members that he wants to make sure Ann Arbor remains an “economic beacon for Michigan.”

Election day is November 8th. To find your polling place, please visit the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s web page.