Address to Council - April 7, 2008
I would have liked to address my remarks to my fellow council members, but I’ve learned to my regret that many of them aren’t listening. On this issue, I’ve discovered that discourse and debate are unwelcome. Instead, I’m addressing my remarks to the public, here tonight and watching this at any time in the future.
I will be voting against the issuance of bonds for the construction of the Courts/Police facility. Not because I don’t believe we need to repair our existing City Hall. We do. Not because I don’t believe our police department’s space is poorly designed and has been sadly neglected. It is and it has. But because this project as a whole is not the project we’ve been led to believe.
I say “as a whole” because a very small fraction of the total cost would go to remodel the police department. That remodeling is long overdue. However, the vast majority of the project would go toward building an immense and unnecessary home for the city’s district court.
There are so many things wrong with the COURT aspect of this project that I have a difficult time focusing on one thing.
I don’t want to talk about the need for the building. We have heard about the inadequate facilities at the existing court house – facilities that you and I paid significant dollars to upgrade just a few years ago. We have heard that the city has an obligation to provide space for the District Court – although we’ve never heard that we have an obligation to build our own court house. Some have said that the Circuit Judges won’t allow the 15th District Judges to continue to work in the County Court House – but of course, we all know that the judges don’t make that decision. The County Commissioners do, just as we on the City Council do. And the City Council, before I was elected, decided to build its own courthouse – a plan I consider fiscally unsound. The Chair of the County Commissioners, Jeff Irwin, told me last November and reiterated only three weeks ago that city council members had come to the County Commission and asked for a two-year lease, saying the city would build its own building. A longer lease there – or somewhere else – is clearly an option.
I don’t want to talk about the design of the project, because then I’ll have to spend too much time questioning why we have designed a state of the art secure building to protect our court officers from violent criminals. Our district court doesn’t handle violent crime. The district courts in Ypsilanti City, Ypsilanti Township, and Chelsea don’t require citizens to empty out their pockets onto an airport-style conveyor belt while being scrutinized by armed guards. There is a reason for this security at the circuit court, which handles serious offenses. Such a forbidding environment isn’t required, however, in our user-friendly district court which handles traffic tickets, minor offenses, and evictions. Please note that this is not a complaint about the designer of the building, but about the parameters given for that design, which have added exponentially to the cost we are presented with here today.
What I really want to talk about is the cost of the project – the cost today, and into the future.
Right now, you and I are building a new courthouse on Hogback Road – state of the art, full security, three court rooms, jury room, records storage, all the frills. This court actually deals with violent criminals and needs the security facilities; it is also adjacent to the County’s new jail. You and I are also building a new court facility in Saline; one that doesn’t need high-tech security features, and costs accordingly.
Just a few years ago you and I paid real money to update our County Courthouse to provide security features, including armed guards and metal detectors. We closed access to the Courthouse at all doors but one; it seems these features are needed for the Circuit Court, which handles felony cases. Perhaps these features are inadequate. If they are, how long will it be before we are asked to build a new courthouse to meet the needs of the Circuit Court? And if that happens – you and I will be paying for it.
Maybe you don’t know about these projects. They are real. The County is building them with our tax dollars. The County invested in the County Court House with our tax dollars – from a variety of sources. The County did all of this without a millage, without asking you to vote. And maybe that’s why you didn’t notice – but we are all paying for the improvements to our County’s courts. And we’ll be paying for years to come.
During the course of the discussions, many of us on Council have used homeownership metaphors to describe our views of this project. I have been guilty of this, myself. I have described the need to fix the roof before putting on an addition – but in all fairness, an improvident homeowner might take out a home equity loan to do both at once. One wonders, though, at the homeowner who would build an addition that is as large as the original house, re-landscape – and still not fix the roof. At the March meeting of the Main Street merchants’ association, our City Administrator, Roger Fraser, acknowledged that fixing the roof wasn’t part of this project.
However, these homeownership terms aren’t really adequate. Some have stated that owning buildings is more valuable than paying rent. I’ve heard other members of Council refer to this project as the city ‘building equity’. Building equity? Isn’t that what you do when you plan to sell your house? We are a city, not a homeowner. And we’re not selling, so we – the taxpayers – just aren’t going to reap a benefit from that ‘equity’. When we pay rent in the community, we’re actually helping the community. Private landlords benefit, and so does the tax base. The rent we pay to private landlords won’t necessarily be easy to replace. We’ve all seen how many offices are empty. The rent we pay to the County also benefits the County – a benefit the County is beginning to recognize. The consolidation of services some of you may have heard proposed for the County Courthouse might actually cost us all money – and right now, we don’t have all that much to spare. Please remember – we all pay County taxes, too, and Ann Arbor tax payers provide a significant portion of the tax support to the County – and often reap the smallest amount of benefits.
I’d love to build a new city hall. It’s a project that’s long overdue. But I’m really caught, because this project goes both too far and not far enough. What we build today will last for 40 years, at least. And what we are building with $47 million — $31 million that we propose authorizing to borrow – is totally wrong for our needs. We’re using every possible dollar to build a golden courthouse. We heard today that, to our surprise, we won’t be in the red for FY09. That’s good, but it shows how closely we are already watching every penny. If we borrow this money, the bond payments will be far more than any savings from consolidating our employees in one location. Right now, for instance, the city charges about $350K per year for cell tower fees. For the next 30 years, these fees are slated to pay off the bond. Does that mean these fees won’t be raised for 30 years? What do these fees support now? The DDA is expected to provide about $520K per year for the next 30 years to pay off the bond. This is money that won’t be available for the downtown. It’s money that has to come from somewhere, as well. And it has to keep coming for the next 30 years.
But if we build this court facility, what do we get? We don’t have more space for services for you. We don’t have significantly better working conditions in the long run for many of our employees. We even lose spaces for you to put your car when you have business at the city, because all that parking goes away. And we gain a long-overdue improvement to the police department – which wouldn’t cost very much by itself – and a large, secure court facility with private elevators to protect judges from violent traffic offenders