Transcript
JL: Hi, Ann Arbor AFers. This is cohost Jess Letaw. The pod team is taking June off for a much-needed break. Council is still going strong, and it’s looking like June is turning out to be a doozy, so make sure you pay attention to the a2council hashtag on Twitter, Council meeting threads on Facebook in the Ann Arbor Humans Who Wonk group, and check Legistar to read the agendas for yourself. Even though we’re off, we hope you still keep getting informed and getting involved!
In the meantime, we’re rerunning some old episodes you’ve told us you liked, with a little context about where the topic came from. Today’s rerun is episode 13: Power, Personalities, and Perceptions.
One of the things we talk about most that doesn’t make it into the podcast is how dynamics beyond the Council table affect what happens at it. We made the decision really early on to largely omit referring to those dynamics in this podcast; they largely don’t serve to get anyone informed and involved, and really, it just riles everyone up and distracts from actual policy, actual governance, and actual change. For this episode, though, we wanted to find a way to be able to talk about those dynamics in a way that’s useful. One aspect we considered was how most folks don’t understand, or even know, that Ann Arbor’s model of governance is called a “weak mayor” system. Another aspect we considered was the landscape of local journalism and how this affects what people know about local politics and how they think about it. The last aspect we considered was councilmembers themselves, their attitudes and actions, and how they are perceived by the community in turn.
In the end, in this episode, we ended up focusing on the councilmembers themselves, including some of their actions and issues. We made an exception to our own personal rule not to talk about “shenanigans”, including our first-ever official definition of “shenanigans,” namely, things Councilmembers do that don’t directly pertain to policy, but tend to get a lot of airplay.
We talked about this episode for two months before we sat down to record it, and in the end there was so much material we had to cut two thirds of it. (Don’t worry! We’ll come back to it all in the future.) We tried to be as thoughtful, fair, and honest as we could in bringing you a little more of the “behind the scenes” of Ann Arbor City Council.
Here for your re-listening pleasure is episode 13, “Power, Personalities, and Perceptions.”
MH: Hi, and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor AF, a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor. We discuss current events in local politics and policy, governance, and other civic good times. I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she/her, I’m Jess Letaw and my pronouns are she/her, and I’m Molly Kleinman and my pronouns are she/her. We’re your cohosts to help you get informed, and get involved. It’s your city!
MK: Okay, so today, we are taking a deeper dive into city leadership because there’s more to Council than just the resolutions and what’s on the agenda so we’re going to be talking about different visions for the city and how those affects the choices, our leaders make along with personalities power and local news, but first we’re going to start with a definition so Michelle take us away.
MH: Shenanigans – I’ve been using that word a lot on this show and I haven’t and I think it’s time to talk about what I mean when I say shenanigans and I think I was kind of using it in a way, where I wasn’t really sure what I was talking about, but here’s what i’m thinking about right now. There’s a lot that goes on at the City Council. I watched the Council meetings very closely, I sat there and watched all 150 hours of each meeting you know, sometimes they last for until 2am and I’m sitting there live tweeting them on the Ad Council hashtag and you’re much more than just the Council meetings right you’re at the bodies and.
JL: yeah the Caucus meetings or are the nights before.
MH: Or the Sunday before and then I go to everything every now and then like the planning Commission but not not not as often as they go to Council meetings, but a lot of what goes on at those Council meetings is like there’s a lot of noise going on there’s a lot of personalities there’s a lot of egos and the kind of the policies. You know I think I think we all have an idea in our head and we all have an idea in our head that’s like there’s like some pure forum where they’re going and like philosophically discussing these ideas and and coming in there with open minds and and that they’re ready to change their hearts.
MK: Things like that and.
MH: There’s a lot of debate on Council and that’s not really what it is most of the time, but I feel like sometimes when I focus so hard on the personalities and on the minute by minute blow by blow. It obscures some of what’s going on at the Council and that distraction that you know when we’re when we’re when we’re talking about you know just policies and egos and things when those are happening that’s that’s the shenanigans. The things that like stop us from discussing policy and start and keep us talking about teams, you know, like egos and personalities and this Council member did this, and that Council member did that.
MK: So why don’t we break down a little bit this idea of the teams that are on Council.
MH: yeah so we have we talked about an old Council majority and a new Council majority, the old Council majority.
MH: We sometimes call them the anti party and they seem to be the ones who are more interested in.
MH: I don’t know that the, I think, well, I think we’re going to talk about that with Jess later on, but there’s kind of in general, the thing is that there’s kind of an old Council Jordan, a new Council majority and there’s a lot of clashing that causes these shenanigans and there’s a lot of ill will between them and I think that’s what causes some of the shenanigans.
JL: That’s true, but also, I want to moderate the language just a little bit. I don’t know that there’s a lot of ill will between them a little and it gets blown up into looking like a lot more than it is like that I just I feel like, especially in social media and in you know casual conversation that we read Council as a lot more dramatic and divided than it actually is, you know that there’s a truism that good governance is boring, and I think, for the most part, it is, but because we’re so similar on the political spectrum of those those differences get blown up a little bit.
MH: We can.
JL: We may disagree on that, but I do think that it’s smaller than it usually seems.
MH: That’s true they end up spending a long time discussing a thing a couple of amendments will take up a lot of time, people will propose an amendment they’ll they’ll they’ll propose to postpone something it takes up a lot of time and then it’s and then it’s generally unanimous or close to it when the actual thing happens.
JL: So we were talking about who, who is old.
MH: Majority yeah the old maturity okay so yeah so the old mature and it’s kind of weird that they do kind of function as parties, even though they’re all amongst the Democratic Party, but I don’t know and there’s some debate about whether they even do, but it seems pretty clear that there are some that trust that doesn’t trust others more than others, you know, and that makes the two parties happen.
MK: Right, and so we talked about it, we talked about it, we have – sorry – sorry we talked about naming the names, a little bit for this, you know. On this podcast we tend to focus on the policy and less on the personalities, but I do think it’s helpful to sort of to at least say who, who seems to be on which side to the extent that there are sides and we’ve and the framing of old majority majority is what we have used so far on the podcast and so.
MH: The old minority in do it by ward’s to remind myself where i’m going so first word we got the old majority was Jeff painter and on the second word Kathy griswold is old majority and the third Ward none of them were on the on the old majority in the fourth Ward Elizabeth Nelson was on the old majority and and the fifth Ward Ali around while he was in the old majority, the new majority is first word, Lisa dish second Ward, when song third Ward. Julie grand, and travis for dina fourth Ward.
MK: Which one is the fourth word ghire.
MH: Air and air and then the fifth word is Erica bricks and then of course mayor Taylor. Also, I would consider to be old mature to be a new majority.
MK: Although he has been the mayor before some of these folks who are new majority were on Council. When they were all the way exactly which, at this point it’s just mayor Taylor and Julie grant from the third Ward right and maybe can we pause for a brief moment to talk about the wards and how many Council members, there are, and all of that, I don’t know that we’ve ever fully broken that that’s true.
JL: Because I’ll do that real quick so Ann Arbor by its city charter is broken up into slices like a pie literally in the Charter language, like a pie, so we have five words going from the Northeast segment to the Northwest segment in clockwise order – 12345 – each word gets to elected representatives and then there’s a mayor, who is also a member of city council and has certain privileges like veto power and I actually have no idea what the mayor gets but you know.
MH: If he’s out and veto power and just likes running the meetings that’s pretty.
JL: And just running the meetings but, in general, his vote is one vote. So Council is 11 hours yeah to two Members per Ward and then the mayor and sorry molly you were gonna say.
MK: The Mayor also has appointment power.
JL: Of those ways.
MK: He puts people forward and then the Council votes on them we’re going to talk a little bit more in a minute about the power dynamics. One thing I want to point out about the pie structure is that it dilutes the student vote because campuses in the middle of town and the camp and the student neighborhood surround the campus by dividing the city up like a pie, where the middle of the pie is campus it’s a way to. I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but I think it is a little bit but it divides it up the students, so that they can vote as a block as powerfully. I mean they could but they can’t they’re not. It’s going to be harder for them to elect a representative, although we have had students elected to city council and.
JL: You know it’s interesting because, when you say that it makes me think Oh, we kind of gerrymandered students, because although renters are 55% of the city population. There I think less than 20% of any given Ward I’d have to take a look at that I can’t remember but somehow the way that it’s divided up you’re right, really, really does diminish the voting power yeah yeah yeah if the.
MH: If the renters are all downtown yeah , but yeah like um one thing that I also wanted to talk about is kind of some of the characteristics of the old majority and the new majority. I feel like the old majority has a lot more of the shenanigans a lot more the distracting things that that I have to yell about on Twitter that make me mad while I’m watching the meetings, a lot more things about personalities and egos. So it was refreshing when the new majority came in there and they were less about egos and they were more about letting the this you know, taking the work seriously and letting the city staff do their jobs and not watching over their shoulders and not making sure that they had to have their name on everything but like I’m also getting a little bit. Like I was hoping, they would accomplish more, as well as just being interested in good governance and it kind of reminds me of the situation with the Democratic Party and the you know the national level, where it’s like oh good God we got a new democratic majority and at the you know house and the Senate and the and the White House will be able to accomplish everything and then we’re not seeing that kind of that kind of leadership that we were hoping for and like it still looks like you know, and when the Democratic Party does that at the national level it’s like they’ll blame the Republicans.
JL: And it’s like well.
MH: How are you playing the Republicans? You guys have the majority, and you know when the when, if you know, so it can’t be there. The people on the City Council aren’t really blaming each other for it because really the ones that are complaining about not enough stuff getting done is just me.
MK: I do also think that the differences of opinion on the national level are there are some really big chasms between some of the stances. That’s your mom national democrats that I don’t think it’s true among the current Council majority in the sense they’re trying to move more slowly in order to respect staff’s time and not not sort of come in and break a bunch of stuff rather than because some people think the Lawson records should be living on poverty wages and some people think everyone should have a living wage like it’s not I don’t.
MH: Think we’re that far apart that’s true that’s true it feels that way to me because i’m in the trenches.
JL: But that’s a really good point like one of our bitterest policy fights is pedestrian crossings of roads that’s a really good fight to have right like do we have flashing lights So where do we have you know barriers where cars can’t go as quickly and really truly like at the policy table that that’s kind of a rough one, but we’re not fighting about whether or not the kid should be in cages like that rats were Ann arbor is that.
MH: It just feels so important to me because, like I don’t want to get hit by cars, you know that’s it, not just because it’s I don’t know it just because it sounds small doesn’t mean it is small, you know.
MK: I mean that’s what we’re doing here right like we think city governance is important.
JL: Yeah and that’s true so and I guess we don’t want to diminish the sense of urgency, I think the thing that I’m cautious about is feeling like everything is a life or death battle because that’s exhausting.
MH: yeah.
JL: You know, like, how do you keep up with the news, how do you keep up with any given conversation without feeling defeatist all the time and and when I say you like i’m talking to myself how do I stay engaged without getting overwhelmed. So, for me, I have to, I have to think that some issues are legit worth investing that level of emotional own into it, and some are not so that’s that’s a personal choice, but I get you yeah.
MH: But yeah I mean I guess like I myself get distracted by the shenanigans and you know I guess I I, I hope that I can come to put my emotional oomph in the right places, and remember that, like when Council members are behaving badly at the table that doesn’t mean that’s the big issue, the big issue is, we got to defend the police.
JL: You know.
MH: Yeah, so I think that’s also why I get so frustrated with shenanigans because I’m like, why are you guys arguing about like the Council rules, why aren’t you why aren’t you defunding the police.
JL: Well, and and here’s a fun little making the sausage note for our listeners shenanigans are exactly why we do Council meetings, the way that we do previews instead of reviews and that’s because it can get really easy when you’re doing a recap of what happened of getting into he said she said, or the personality of the work getting in the way of understanding the work, so we do previews. So that we can focus on the strategic of the policies we can focus on like where they slot into Council’s existing policy and strategic objectives like it helps us be clear about shutting out the shenanigans when we do those previews.
MH: Sometimes we end up having to talk about them, because the shenanigans make it all the way to the agenda.
MK: Right they carry over.
MH: yeah but um okay let’s talk let’s have molly talk about some stuff right now molly, what do you got some stuff to say I do, and this is sort of zooming out a little bit from the stuff that we were just talking about, but I think.
MK: Something that it has taken me a long time to understand is how power is actually shared in the city like what who has the ability to do what I think we frequently see people blaming the mayor because that’s how it works on TV the mayor is in charge of the whole city and anything nefarious is because of the mayor and anything good is because of the mayor and that’s sort of the most visible structure of how cities are run but it’s not actually how Ann arbor is run and the way in arbor is structured is more is more like a lot of other smalle cities but it’s this it’s this thing that I had never heard of before somewhat recently, which is the idea of a weak mayor system and then every weak mayor system is a little unusual and a couple of ways, so usually in a strong mayor system, you have an elected city council and you have who’s there are elected by ward’s or some kind of divisions and then you have a mayor who’s elected by everybody, and the mayor has a lot of power executive power to do all kinds of things in a weak mayor system, usually. You have a city council that’s elected by the wards again, and then the city council members choose the mayor and the mayor doesn’t have a lot of power, aside from running Council meetings and maybe veto power, maybe not here in Ann arbor we do this weird hybrid where our mayor is weak but he’s elected them it’s almost always a he unfortunately our current mayor he elected by the entire city. Even though mostly his power is just as an 11th member of city council, the mayor runs the meetings our mayor does have veto power, but he doesn’t have all this like bill de Blasio level New York City power. Did either of you have anything you want to check out about the other, the administrator, we have to explain the administrator piece to and I’m going to need help with this one. So in this week’s mayor system, what you have is a Council and then administrator and the administrator is the person who actually runs the city. On a day to day level and our administrator takes his orders and again it’s a he and I. I’m going to keep pointing this out it’s really frustrating to me how few women there are in the upper levels of employment in the city.
MH: We interviewed a couple of them for a couple of women, and when we were you know deciding on who should be the new city administrator and then they decided on a man yeah because he was more experienced, how do we get more experience.
MK: mm hmm wonder right so as i’m just leaving that aside the pronouns have meaning our city administrator operates at the pleasure of the City Council, the Council sets the policy direction, and then the administrator supervises all of the staff, all of the departments and is the one who’s responsible for executing. The policy guidance of city council and that’s there’s a very clear division of Labor nd it’s why this to me at the time, seemingly like, why does the City Council care so much about the city administrator that they would fire him because our previous Council fired or previous administrator it’s because the administration.
MH: mannequins.
MK: Due to shenanigans but it’s because the administrator is responsible for actually doing things and if the administrator isn’t doing what Council wants him to do that can cause all kinds of problem. So I wanted to just sort of lay out this foundation for us as we’re talking about the dynamics of Council and the way power is shared because you can’t really understand the power of counsel if you don’t if you don’t understand that the mayor can actually do that much. In our situation, the mayor doesn’t have a lot of power, aside from being this 11th voting Member he’s the tiebreaker basically on Council and he has veto power which he hasn’t used that much as I understand it, he does use it, but it has been historically it hasn’t been that frequent are there other things that you all wanted to add about this piece.
JL: I love metaphors so I want people to understand the Ann Arbor mayor doesn’t think about New York or Chicago think about the show Portlandia. That’s the mayor, we have respect.
MH: That is the mirror also like I think the way I think of it is like a board of directors versus a CEO you know, like the CEO is the city administrator and they’re the one that you know, does the work because all of our elected officials are not full time employees and they’re not supposed to be like experts and administrators in it and administering their support you know we expect them to be just making policy and then that policy is getting executed so that’s you know, the Council versus the administrator one thing about you know the mayor that I think is interesting is because you know we talked about gerrymandering of the renters and the and the students, but the mayor, is the only member of the city council that’s elected at large and so kind of you know doesn’t have that same gerrymandering situation going on. So sometimes when you see like you might see the mayor election going differently than you would expect, if you look at the word elections and things like that kind of like how it goes down in the state sometimes.
JL: And there’s some conversation and won’t spend a lot of time on this, but there’s some conversation about does it make sense for more of our Council members to be at large versus board specific because it tends to get it can be a little bit territorial when you make decisions you’re like not is this good for the city, but is this good for award one, or is this good for Award for so there’s on the one hand, some benefit to our large city council members more than just mayor, because their constituency is a little bit different then the big challenge to that in my mind is that the at large, elections are a much higher barrier right, so the whole city has to know who you are and have confidence in you in order to vote for you right now City Council are two Members per Ward. That’s not a super heavy lift to get to know the religious institutions and Community organizations and things like that in your Ward, and so I just wanted to say that about the mayor’s at large ness versus the Council members or fitness.
MH: And also like who can run like it takes a lot more like you got to be someone who can muster a lot more money than you gotta be someone who has a lot more time in order to run. In order to run for that large election, then you can point yep um oh man we’re at the time that we put down on the spreadsheet for this piece, but I really want to talk about the evil near conspiracy theories.
MK: To do it.
MH: Yeah okay cuz I think I feel like this is a big made a big motivating force in politics and Ann Arbor is that some people think that they think that there’s an evil conspiracy with the Mayor and the mayor’s people in the mayor’s cronies or whatever they say that you know they talk they talk about how much you know that they seem to think that the mayor runs everything and makes all the decisions and it’s just super weird because when you hear it molly lay it out like that, like the mayor doesn’t have much power like and.
MK: So the mayor conspiracy only works when you don’t understand how the city runs.
MH: Right and like so I was talking to a former City Council member who was who is way into the evil mayor conspiracy and you would think that you would think that this person having been on Council would know how Council works, but maybe that’s why they didn’t get reelected, but um you know, and I was standing at the polling place for a couple hours like handing out stuff for their opponent and I kept on trying to engage that Council member about policy issues and all they wanted to talk about was the evil matter conspiracy, which is why I feel like something to bring up here because they had this idea that like the Mayor stuck a bunch of stuff into the a to zero plan and i’m just like how did he, like China, ask that question to this pson like how did he do it, like the 820 plan was drawn up by you know a very visible public process involving like staff members involving Community organizations involving lots of people they’ve rented out they took out a whole public school and had the entire day of it, they did that, like a couple times and I’m like how would the mayor have snuck stuff in there, that was like against the will of all of these organizations and individuals who went.
MK: To zero plan is the city’s carbon neutrality plan.
MH: This is how powerfully people believe in the evil mayor’s conspiracy of him.
JL: There’s an evil mayor conspiracy and there’s the evil mayor like a faction which I’ll get into a little bit more in a minute, which is that the mayor, a phrase that you’ll see all the time and m live is the mayor and his allies, the Marin has allies, as though the mayor is at the head and the people who consistently vote together are following the mayor’s lead. If you know it’s well anyway I’ll get it.
MK: Take away, I think we’re ready for that.
MH: Okay yeah we’re talking factions.
JL: All right, whether yeah OK, so the header to my to my portion of this section is, I do not find factions a helpful way of understanding city politics, because this is an harbor. We are a city of opinions with 100,000 people. We have 500,000 opinions and that’s one of the things actually that I love about this community is that we care passionately. It’s noisy, it’s bumpy, it’s rambunctious here, including in politics, but it also means that understanding Council through factions is not super helpful because there are 11 intensely individual people on Council and not not one single person at the Council table is looking to be told what to do by somebody else. So I don’t like factions and I also don’t like them because it’s not a helpful way of understanding how normal people think and talk about politics. Very few people in the city are like I only listen to these three Council members and no one else most normal people are like is my trash getting picked up next week. That intersection that flooded last summer what whatever that was was that fixed like that’s the level of care and concern that we have about city politics and so understanding it through personalities and factions to me just is not useful. So what i’d like to do is introduce how I understand the different positions that people have and also advocate for my understanding of it, which is that not everyone occupies the same place on the spectrum all the time. People move, people change, folks who agree on 80% of the things will agree with you know somebody else on the other, 20% like I just want us to understand that there are very few monoliths in anything to do with city politics. So there’s a few differences. This and that. The kind of frameworks that I want us to understand and the first one that i’m going to bring in is the party analogy it’s a good party versus a bad party and I don’t mean political parties, I mean like actually go remember when we hung out with people and had a solo cup for something that kind of party.
MK: I don’t know what a party is anymore. Thank you for that reminder.
JL: It’s when we sit in our living room with very comfortable clothes and our own solo cup that’s a new party. So let me just read the introduction to this article and drop it in the show notes it’s a really lovely and quite digestible history of 20th century city planning, but it opens with the party analogy. What do you do if you throw a party and everyone who shows up brings more to eat and drink than they themselves consume, whether they were specifically invited or not. You throw the doors open as wide as possible, of course, everyone who shows up is making your party better, and so the more the merrier. What do you do if you throw a party and everyone who shows up whether they were invited or not eats and drinks more than themselves? You would be a fool if you didn’t shut the door and bar entry to anyone else. Your party is getting worse in a hurry and everyone who shows up only accelerates the decline. The city building conversation is full of discussion regarding Nimby or not, in my backyard behavior, including the moral dimension of what is good, decent and righteous i’ve seen time again, people who move into a neighborhood and then say no more. Whether the stated excuse for freezing the neighborhood in time is a fear of gentrification, environmental degradation, or the loss of neighborhood character, the desire is the same to prevent what I just did from happening again. I think if you think about the good party bad party analogy, that is more indicative than almost anything else, of how people feel about policy decisions. Do we feel like the city is in a good place and we should do more of X or have more of X or bring more people to enjoy X. Or do we feel like it’s a bad party? Do we feel like we’re wobbly we’re not super stable, we’re not getting basic things right, and so we should not allow more events or bring more people in X. That’s one way to understand how people look at it there’s also folks who look at it, as I wait I want an arbor to be like it used to be versus I want the future to look different from the past and i’m not going anywhere near as far as making arbor great again I really like let’s be more nuanced than that. I went and I want Ann Arbor to be more like it was in the 1980s or excuse me, the 1960s. I want it to be what it felt a little bit dirtier a little bit grittier a little bit more real whatever that means that’s what I want versus. I don’t know if I see more bike lanes happening in other cities, maybe we could have a bike lane here. I see more like street performers and other cities, maybe we could figure out how to make that happen here Sabor food trucks, I see X happening in other places, is this a part of a 21st century city and should we have some of that here so that’s another way to think about it. Another way to think about how people make decisions and how people think about things is, let us make no mistakes, let us be super super careful at super super slow versus I don’t know let’s try it and see there’s arguments on both sides, you definitely want to be careful of impact versus intent and unintended consequences. But there’s also a consequence to no action whatsoever, we know the planet is on fire, if we do nothing, we are making a decision there’s also a conversation around defining who’s the real Ann arbor and who gets to make decisions. A lot of times and I’m looking at Michelle here cuz she’s had some thoughts and feelings on this, a lot of times this gets defined as who already lives here versus who doesn’t and who could or should a lot of times this gets defined as who owns right, so I own a home care i’ve lived in Ann arbor for 25 years, therefore, my opinion is X. And kind of our understanding is Oh, that means your opinion has more weight versus somebody who’s in a mckinley property they moved here, four months ago they have a thought about a bike lane is that real Ann arbor who’s to say what’s the litmus. The point that I want to make is that it’s not really about winning and losing on individual issues it’s about engaging from a place of strong values and a strong vision. So I don’t agree really with any of the faction characterizations what I look at for the individual Council members, including the mayor is do you have a strong set of values. Do you have a strong vision for the city and is the work that you’re doing at the counsel table fulfilling both of those things. I’m gonna take a breath and see what Molly Michelle has to say.
MK: I think it’s probably pretty obvious from the episodes we’ve done so far that all three of us are generally on the side of a different future. For the city of Ann arbor I think we’re also on the side of everyone is real Ann arbor and we care about the perspectives, not just of the people who live here, but the people who want to live here, the people who work here the people whose lives are affected by Ann arbor because they live nearby or they work here we have a pretty widely encompassing the vision of who should matter in our city and who should matter to our leaders, even if those aren’t necessarily the people who are loudest. I, are you still technically. I was. Yeah I guess like who’s the real a&r, but I wanted to talk a little bit about something that the something that i’ve actually heard said at the counsel table is that they’ll make a distinction between residents and advocates, and you know if something like bill, and this, this is usually come up in the in the in the discussion about bike lanes they’ll say. Oh, the real residents, you know they want.
MH: They don’t want these bike lanes, they want to keep their parking free or they want to like have another lane of driving that’s what the real residents want, but then, all you advocates had to come in here and start talking about bike lanes and i’m like wire, the wire, the one people more real than the other people. I don’t understand why they think that some people know opinions are more important than others and Mike versus like. I don’t know. I think I think there’s like here’s the thing where. Some of the Council members have this vision of representing their constituents as representing the real constituents or instead of the advocates. But, like the way they execute that is by seeing who comes to them with problems and that’s going to be the people who are already comfortable talking to the government versus other people who might put less energy into fulfilling the will of the people who happen to reach out to them and more into like why what has been determined to be a good policy through. Other means you know because they know that it’s not exactly an equitable slice of the pie slice of an arbiter that if you just listen to, who already feels empowered to talk to the government, and so they put in the work and they let the staff put in the work of doing outreach and doing studies and things like that so I don’t know I mean yeah residents versus advocates and I think like you know if washing out biking and walking coalition, for example, that was since that’s that’s where I’ve often heard that heard this come up, they say, oh Those are just a bunch of advocates. But like they’ve they do outreach they do work they represent people like and they do, and they do you know they’re coming from a place where they’re coming from a place of where they’ve studied things and I know things I don’t know.
JL: Under this is, you might even say they have values and vision.
MH: Yes, exactly right and it’s not wrong that they do that. It doesn’t mean they’re not real people, but you know.
MK: I wonder if this distinction and i’m making this up as I go but advocates are talking about needs for like needs for a group of people beyond just themselves, whereas residents are talking about what they need for themselves and that’s how the Council is hearing it like when an individual resident comes to me, and they are concerned about it. The traffic on their own street because this new housing development is going in that person is a resident, but if someone else comes to me and they’re concerned about traffic down this whole whole corridor and keeping everyone who moves down that corridor safe. That’s an advocate I don’t know if that’s how it actually breaks down but that’s a little bit how it feels like there’s this sort of expectation of self interest this and and.
MH: And that that’s a virtuous wait a way to engage.
JL: Right, well, I think that there may also be a misperception. Like molly i’m thinking off the cuff and we’ll see how that goes, but there, there is maybe not a misperception but a question when a constituent comes to you with an issue are they a canary in a coal mine, or are they speaking only to something that very narrowly affects them. That I think it would be hard as a Council member to read and and may account for some of the misunderstandings, I think it’s also interesting. When it comes to the resident versus advocate thing that the language is often very similar so nobody is almost nobody is going to come to a Council member and say this benefits me and it benefits me only and I really need you to make this change a lot of times what people say is this is painful for me therefore it’s painful for other people, and so I think we should make this change and so again distinguishing between residents and advocates is functionally meaningless in this context.
MK: yeah.
JL: So anyway, I don’t know if I’m helping or hurting but it’s just it’s complicated.
MK: right but it’s the Council members who seem to create this distinction for themselves about whose voices matter and residents matter and advocates don’t matter, but that, like who knows what’s in their heads, as far as who counts as a resident and who counts as an advocate, even if all the advocates live here in single family homes even.
JL: For sure I do also want to make a quick language note on you to hear us saying resident we’re not saying citizen. Because we are not narrowly defining people who live in our Community, as people who have hit a certain you know checklist of yes, I am a citizen versus now I don’t know if you live in a community or a resident. So I think that’s everything I wanted to say about Molly’s faction. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about it. I don’t even know what you want to call this section.
MK: Well, so this This is connected to the idea of factions and it’s about how to the extent that we have local news how local news covers city council and city politics and we see a lot in the limited local news that we have about sort of Council divided and these two factions and different there’s basically am live in the observer, those are those are it right for sort of like formal news outlets that.
JL: sounds great.
MK: All right.
JL: yeah Michigan daily I mean ideally campus centered but yes, the daily for.
MK: Did you cover local politics yeah that’s right, so we have a few different, we have a few different locals news outlets.
MK: We don’t have a lot of local news reporters that folks who come to all of these Council meetings and cover all of this stuff, and so the vision, the or the like the picture of city politics that comes from our local news is um it’s really kind of narrow and certainly we’re biased because we’re here, creating a podcast about city politics and so we’re trying to expand the kinds of perspectives that people can get if they want about what’s happening in the news, but you know for headlines to be interesting there often has to be some conflict there often has to be some drama, and so the headlines coming out of sort of city council meetings often focus on whatever. Wherever the division was whatever the division was about, even if the division was about something that’s not particularly substantive and there were also votes at that same meeting on things that we’re actually going to affect our day to day lives, a lot more, and just I think you wanted to talk, maybe a little bit more about this Council divided headline thing.
JL: yeah yeah so a lot of times in local coverage will see Council divided seven four on crosswalks are just on my mind so Council divided seven for on crosswalks Emily and then the story is about who voted on what and what we’re not talking about are the relative pedestrian and bicycle safety, safety statistics pertaining to each intervention we’re not talking about how each one does or does not fulfill our larger policy objectives we’re not having a global or technical conversation about the issues at the table it’s essentially a becomes a high school newspaper about who said what. So anytime I found what the problem is it’s hard to contextualize so anytime I see a Council divided headline I immediately check out because, in a democracy, a difference of opinion is not news. It’s a symptom that the system is working as it should, if we were having 11 to zero votes, all the time, I would be extremely concerned. I mean more, but not all the time um so what I wanted to say is that one of the things we wanted to do with this episode was help people understand how to understand things that we may hear all the time and it can be difficult to conceptualize and what I wanted to say is that people disagreeing on something doesn’t make some of those people good and some of those people bad. It doesn’t make the policy in question necessarily good or bad, we have to ask a little bit more than who said what.
MH: But I think I like the reason that we’re not seeing this stuff properly contextualized. It’s just because there isn’t money on these newspapers anymore yeah there’s a reason for it.
JL: yeah yeah.
JL: So we’re folks yeah.
MH: You know I guess like to fill in that to you know to fill in the gaps as people like us making a podcast or people like you know writing on on Facebook yeah but you know we’re all coming from a perspective, where I’m a biased source and I get caught up in the shenanigans too, and you know it’s I don’t know like no one no one’s getting paid enough for this is getting paid members, frankly, like no we’re paying them like you know they don’t have to do like 60 or 70 hours of work and then and then, on the Council and then they have to do their day jobs too, because the Council doesn’t pay them enough to really think through the full context of all this stuff.
MK: yeah so maybe there was less to say about the news thing than I expected it’s just that it’s this feeling like I think, to the extent that there are sides in the city, there are these sort of like small groups of people who believe that there are sides and who believe themselves to be firmly on one side or the other, and both sides frequently object to how they’re covered in.
JL: What local news.
MK: I have both sides feel like the one journalist, we have gone to city council meetings and are biased towards the other side, and you know this is a little different from the national political space where there’s very clearly outlets that are oriented more towards conservative viewers and outlets that are oriented more towards liberal viewers. Here in Ann Arbor that’s not the problem, the problem is just that there’s not enough period there’s just not enough journalism happening here to really dig into what’s going on and help regular people who aren’t watching Council meetings, every other week understand what’s happening and understand their representatives and how the representation is working and whether they might want to make a change some of this stuff on this episode today it’s been hard for me to hear and say because, like I live in the shenanigans world you know.
MH: I watch all these meetings and I get really caught up on it and I tweet it all out on a to counsel hashtag about all the shenanigans that go on, and you know I’m getting a little frustrated with it myself because, like you know I feel like I wish it were possible to I don’t know like I don’t know how to like I don’t have I don’t know how to translate all this frustration into like getting work done, you know and I firmly you know, like I you know, like Oh, I wish people wouldn’t have to see themselves as firmly on one side or the other but i’ve been watching all this sure suck do you know because it’s it’s hard to see all the shenanigans happen and not pick a side on the shenanigans yeah um.
JL: Well into Michelle’s point and something that she and I were talking about right before we started recording his feelings about things right, so we were talking, I was saying, you know, sometimes we’re talking about crosswalks, sometimes we’re talking about kids in cages. It doesn’t require the same emotional investment and you’re saying well it’s still a life or death issue it’s worth investing in and, and my pushback is not is yeah it’s not that it’s not important it’s that if i’m going to stay consistently involved in paying attention, I cannot feel like it’s an emergency all the time. That’s exhausting and puts me into shut down, it makes me want to not look at local news for another 12 months and that’s not how I want to be so I have to look at it, as these are the areas I have my values and my vision, these are the areas that I care about this is what i’d like to see happen and I focus pretty narrowly on that, because otherwise. I appreciate you Michelle so much for how you pay attention to the city and how you invite others to pay attention to the city. I don’t feel like I have that many feelings in my feeling bucket.
MH: yeah it does take a spoon factory to work.
MK: The Mayor of the spoon factory.
JL: As well as our resident shenanigans course. I think the last thing that I wanted to say about this is that there’s a difference between policy work and personality work and, if you are paying attention to counsel work and something feels weird to you or you’re like I don’t understand why this is an issue it’s okay to put it aside and not like wrestle it all the way to the ground and understand every single aspect about it focus on what you have bandwidth to help the work move forward that you care about and don’t spend a whole lot of time. On the good guys and the bad guys and making sure that you feel like you’re a good guy don’t don’t spend any time on that and understand your issue talk to your Council members, talk to other people in your community and do what you can to help them move forward because spending time on the personality stuff. It’s just not helping anybody, maybe gratifying on Twitter but it’s not helping.
MH: gratifying and Twitter.
JL: All right, is there anything that we want to do to kind of bring this full circle and put it to bed before we move on to pod keeping.
MH: Have you said the thing it’s like to you?
JL: say today.
MH: I guess like one thing I wanted to say is that, like you know I I, it is hard to get involved in politics and Mike anyone who does like you need to nurture that and Mike I hope I hope that, like the shenanigans or I hope that, like you know the stuff the sense of emergency and stuff doesn’t keep people out, you know.
MK: I don’t know yeah I mean I will.
MH: Hope I also hope the sense of urgency brings people in because it’s an emergency.
JL: really good way to put it in yeah come in and just don’t stay at 11.
MH: So I am a very conflict averse person. I’m this sort of in the Midwest of a bit of a contradiction because I’m a sharp elbows East coaster who really hates fights and watching people fight with each other and so it’s taken me some time to find the right comfort, like the comfortable ways for me to engage in local politics, where I don’t have to feel like i’m in a fight all the time, and I can work on the things that matter to me and I think that’s going to be different for everyone and it’s going to probably take some trial and error, I don’t watch Council meetings, most of the time that is not a great use of my time or spoons. For Michelle watching Council meetings is like this incredibly powerful way to keep up with what’s happening and to communicate out to the world it’s a part of your service Michelle to the way that you are communicating this stuff I really think it is that’s not that can’t be the way that I serve because I would be in constant heart attack mode and so just you know I think one thing we all want to do is try to model for our listeners there that there are different ways to be involved in the city and I want to encourage everyone to to try stuff out and to not feel like you’re a bad participant or if certain modes don’t work for you, it just means that those most don’t work for you, because, like each of you to assign like boards and stuff like that, and you get real deep into specific work and now that I have a harder time having that work for me because, like there’s so many things I care about I just want to keep watching everything. I don’t know.
JL: Michelle is a great example of civics gone right like she started paying attention and then Bam now she has two main lights and all the time. All right, well, I really enjoyed this we haven’t done a deeper dive in a while that was just a jam with the three of us like we’ve done really like research and and conversation intensive ones, but not like this, so I had fun today i’m glad we were able to do it pick.
MH: Some of you had fun.
JL: That’s right, have your own conversations, let us know how they go. That sounds like a thing real podcast people would say right. Okay, so I want to pick up something that we said a couple of episodes back and probably me I was talking about how snow removal gets funded in the downtown and I’m delighted to share that I have a listener correction, so what I said ss that it’s the businesses it’s not the business associations in the downtown therefore carry town Business Association, the main street area Association, the state street district, and the South University Business Association. Those are the four business associations, there are also business a business improvements own I had said that it’s not the business associations that clear snow it’s the biz. Francis doro who’s the director of the State state street district called in to say that that’s not totally true in the mainstream that’s true it’s not the association it’s the biz that does snow clearing and sidewalk cleaning and they also found landscaping in the summer. In state street there’s no biz there’s just the state street district, which is a neighborhood association. The neighborhood association owns the art fair that happens, almost every year, except for when we’re in a palindromic, but in normal years 95% of the association’s income in the year goes through the art fair.The net profit of that fair is used to benefit the community and some of that is budgeted for snow removal so she let me know that in typical years $30,000 gets budgeted for snow clearing so it’s different in different areas of downtown and I want to thank Francis for reaching out and taking the time to help me understand what is really true versus what I said.
MK: Thanks to those of you who have supported us on our kofi. If you’d like to send us a few dollars to cover hosting, you can find us at www.ko-fi.com/annarboraf. And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor AF. We’re your cohosts Molly Kleinman, Michelle Hughes, and myself, Jess Letaw; and thanks as always to producer Jarod Malestein. For questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes, you can email us at annarborafpod@gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!