Candidates for Ann Arbor City Council respond with criticism over rate increases in city budget

The budget for 2010-11 includes rate increases of 3.88 percent for water, 3 percent for wastewater and 2 percent for stormwater.

The four Democrats, if elected, say they are prepared to reopen the city’s budget and direct the city administrator to roll back municipal charges, reinvest departmental fund surpluses in services and return money taken from the city's general fund in 2009 that was transferred to the economic development fund.

The four candidates are Patricia Lesko, who is running for mayor, and Sumi Kailasapathy, Jack Eaton and Lou Glorie, who are running for council seats in the 1st, 4th and 5th Wards, respectively.

They are hosting a public meet and greet event from 6-8 p.m. Sunday at Earhart Village Club House, 835 Greenhills Drive.

Kailasapathy, an accountant, said she has studied the city’s budget and thinks the city's accounting processes should be overhauled. “Merely shifting costs around among various units to create an illusion of cost control is not going to reduce costs any more," she said, adding that the city needs to "stop applying Band-Aids" to address structural budget problems.

Lesko called the late transfer of $2 million in parking revenue from the Downtown Development Authority to the city's general fund a political "quick fix." She claims what the city really needs is a long-term plan to rein in overhead and overspending.

“Time and again, our elected officials play games with the city’s budget by targeting in private committee meetings high-profile, relatively low-cost services and programs for cuts, such as our senior centers, pools and human services funding, then subsequently ‘rescuing’ the items at public council meetings, as they did on May 17," she said.

"This does a disservice to our hard-working city employees, taxpayers and, ultimately, the city government itself. We need to tackle rising overhead costs, future employee pension, health care and retirement costs, and say no to proposed increases in spending for multimillion-dollar, nonessential capital projects."

Eaton said he thinks the council has failed to address the structural problems with the city's budget by relying on temporary funding from the DDA. He said that leaves the underlying problem unresolved, and the city will face the same problems next year.

Mayor John Hieftje defended the council actions taken to balance the budget. He said it's unfair to call the $2 million transfer from the DDA temporary funding.

"We received that funding from the DDA for five years prior to this year, we received it again this year, and I'm completely confident we will receive it for another five years," Hieftje said. "It really is parking money that belongs to the city."

Hieftje pointed out that the DDA money, coupled with the parking fine rate increases and a revision of the city's state-shared revenue forecast, was able to help avoid the elimination of 30 public safety jobs and maintain funding for human services and parks.

Hieftje said he agonized over the parking fine increases, which are expected to generate an additional $652,000 in city revenue next year. But he said many of the fines will be the same if the ticket is paid within one business day.

Glorie criticized the council this week by suggesting "a good deal of pork is hogging space in this budget." She said the general fund should not be tapped to pay for items that should be budgeted in the police-courts building project, such as the $185,000 cost of moving and the $975,000 cost of an audio-visual system.

"We might also question the wisdom of spending millions implementing single-stream recycling while contemplating gutting essential services and raising water and sewer rates to confiscatory levels," she said.

Hieftje said it's silly to criticize the water and sewer rate increases because Ann Arbor's rates are still lower than other peer communities in Michigan, and the money from those charges is paying for needed capital replacement projects in the systems.

Council Member Carsten Hohnke, D-5th Ward, said he questions whether anyone criticizing those rate increases understands the city's finances.

"We have a responsibility to invest in our infrastructure and we've done a good job over the last couple years making investments for the long-term," he said.

Hohnke also said criticism of the $47.4 million police-court building project is growing tired. He said the police department facility was badly out of date and the city needed a new location for its courts, and adding onto city hall was the best choice.

"It doesn't serve the people of Ann Arbor well to continue to try to beat a dead horse," he said. "We needed to make that investment and other people forget that the facilities that our police were working in were grossly substandard. It's the job of government to make prudent investments in infrastructure."

Hohnke also defended the use of the $2 million from the DDA.

"That's a transfer that reflects the fact that the DDA is leveraging parking assets that belong to the people of Ann Arbor and it's not a political quick fix," he said. "It's a transfer of funds for the right to manage those assets and that has been going on for five years now. We fully expect this will be a recurring source of revenue."

Here is a list of all candidates in this year's elections.

Ryan J. Stanton covers government for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529.