Outreach Notebook August 7, 2022

Welcome back to Outreach Notebook. Let’s hope this week you have a cool experience here as the proverbial dog days of summer have arrived and we all could do well by pumping the brakes a bit. Sit back…take in some good nature:

Then a swift, cool breeze later and you glide over to shore for this:

Now that we’ve accessed your parasympathetic nervous system [you’re welcome] let’s recap some local election results and get on with the county budget discussion, shall we?

LOCAL ELECTION RESULTS

The #a2council contests brought in new leadership again. For the second cycle in a row [2020 being the last one], candidates supported by Mayor Taylor have beat out the opposition, leaving basically no one on council to oppose the “mayor’s agenda.” No one, that is, if you believe there are no differences between the incoming council members and the pro-development-focused coalition Taylor has built. Oh yeah and Taylor easily defeated challenger and former Ward 1 CM Anne Bannister with over 60% of the votes tendered for the primary election.

We supported two of those candidates Dharma Akmon in Ward 4 and Cynthia Harrison in Ward 1 both of whom emerged victorious on 8/2/22. Here are those official results which can be found here on the web.

Note that Jenn Cornell beat out incumbent CM Ali Ramlawi in the mighty fifth ward [“mighty” as it is known to typically have the highest turnout of all wards in A2]. Let’s not forget the two unopposed Democratic Party candidates Ayesha Ghazi Edwin [Ward 3] and Chris Watson [Ward 2] who will appear on the ballot in November 2022.

Ann Arbor Officials Respond To Racial Equity Policy Query

Survivors Speak is already on the case by following up with elected officials to ask them what is their racial equity plan for Ann Arbor. None of the current council members answered this query except for Taylor who had this to say:

We wrote about the efforts to have Ann Arbor support Black-owned businesses as a way of beginning a municipal reparations program in Ann Arbor. As yet everyone, including the incoming CMs who will likely be elected and installed in November of this year…everyone has said they support the idea, but no one as yet has proposed a policy to put this value in motion. What do you think?

YPSI AND YPSI TWP ELECTION RESULTS

In Ypsi City, Nicole Brown won the Democratic Party nomination for Mayor. She will face Mark Alan King [Libertarian Party] and Amber Fellows [Renters’ Rights Candidate] in November.

In other Ypsi area related electoral results, Jimmie Wilson Jr won the Democratic Party nomination for State Representative, District 32 among a crowded field of candidates. He will face Republican Party Candidate Martin Church in November.

In County Commissioner races, District 5 incumbent Justin Hodge defeated challengers including former County Commissioner and current State Representative Ronnie Peterson. In District 6, Annie Someville [current Ypsi CM] beat out incumbent Ricky Jefferson.

These two results will have an impact on the make-up of the Board of Commissioners next year when decisions on the quadrennial budget planning process for 2023-2026 will be in motion, a fine segue to the next topic of county budgeting and its current state, if you will.

WASHTENAW COUNTY BUDGET PROCESS - UPDATE FROM WORKING SESSION ON 8/3

On WednesdayAug 3 last week, County Commissioners met for a working session during which a detailed discussion of the current year budget development process was had. Yours truly took a virtual ringside seat and captured some of the slides from the budget presentation.

For those of you interested in and following the People’s Budget For Equity And Justice, we will be having a first town hall-style community meeting on Tuesday Sept 20 from 5-8pm at the Ypsilanti Freighthouse: SAVE THE DATE :)

We thought the discussion last Wednesday to be a good prep for anyone wanting to advocate alongside us for the county to adopt a participatory budget process for a portion of the general fund budget.

We keep being told there is “limited flexibility” in a large portion of the general fund dollars, however, no one as yet has defined the dollar amount to which we have access. That needs to be defined. Who will define it for us? What do you think?

See below for the key dates for this year’s budget deliberations. One of the most frequent issues arising thus far from the small group discussions we’ve been having for the people’s budget has been the question of what to do about emergency shelter for those living without housing in our community. Advocates wanting to move that issue forward will probably have to do so within the current budget planning structure for this winter and not wait for the people’s budget process to play out because that process is focused on longer term outcomes and also focused on the county fully taking on the participatory budgeting processes we are piloting this year and next.

During the discussion it was noted that there will need to be a robust discussion for the quadrennial budget process about the priorities of Human Services v. Public Safety, a silly if necessary distinction to be made. If we want real public safety, we will have enough human services and resources to meet everyone’s needs. More on that in weeks to come.

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Thanks for reading another edition of Outreach Notebook. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been there. See you next week!