Ecology Center

Open space won back a measure of respect in Washtenaw County on November 2 as Ann Arbor voters approved a major parkland acquisition initiative by a 2-1 margin.

Twelve months ago, environmentalists were forced back to the drawing board after county voters turned down an ambitious land preservation ballot proposal. In townships, cities, and villages, activists began re-tooling strategies to contain the unplanned and out-of-control development sweeping over southeast Michigan. The first local measure to reach the ballot came in Ann Arbor.

In late June, the Ecology Center and the local branch of the Sierra Club began organizing a last-minute petition drive to place an open space acquisition measure before voters. Time was against us, though. We only had four weeks to collect 6,000 signatures before the November election deadline of August 4.

Mary Beth Doyle was the Ecology Center's lead organizer of the petition drive, which was based out of the Center's downtown Ann Arbor office. "With two weeks, one week, even three days to go before the deadline, we rated our chances [to collect enough signatures] between bad and worse," Doyle said. "But somehow, in the last few days, the signatures came streaming into our office, as if they were dropped from the sky."

In fact, it took more than a blessing to qualify for the ballot. Through the month of July, 143 people sacrificed hours of their summer to collect signatures. A few volunteers virtually worked full-time to take the campaign over the top. Jeannine Palms, a pre-school teacher and Ecology Center board member, recruited more than a dozen persons to scour their southeast Ann Arbor neighborhood, city parks, and public events for more than 2,500 signatures alone. Two of her recruits, Ed and Marilyn Couture, collected more than 900 signatures themselves. Buoyed by these remarkable efforts and others, the campaign broke all Ann Arbor records for petition success. On August 4, joyous organizers delivered nearly 7,000 signatures to the City Clerk.

Modest Proposal, Restrained Opposition, Hostile Newspaper

In the light of the ambitious county proposal, the Ann Arbor ballot initiative was modest indeed. The county plan was designed to save 10,000 acres of farmland and open space, and the city proposal only 200. But a critical two hundred it is! Planners expect Ann Arbor to get entirely "built out" over the next 5-10 years, and most of the few remaining parcels are covered with woodlands, wetlands, steep slopes, and scenic vistas. Also, the City has hoped to acquire lands along the Huron River to create a riverfront chain of parks, and other connector parcels to link existing parklands. The City's parkland acquisition fund was virtually depleted, however, so without new funds, development would go entirely unchecked.

A more modest proposal brings milder opposition. In 1998, homebuilders and their allies spent $350,000 to defeat environmentalists at the county ballot box. This year, the opposition was restrained. Mayor Ingrid Sheldon, a Republican who has usually supported parks initiatives, objected to the plan's hasty development. Councilperson Joe Upton objected to a tax increase. Others argued that the city should study new funding mechanisms, but no one offered a concrete plan to save the land about to be bulldozed. Still, none of these opponents actively campaigned against the proposal.

As the election campaign wore on, the only organized opposition came from the Ann Arbor News. The city's only newspaper had editorialized against the county proposal the year before, so few observers doubted that they'd oppose the city parks millage. But no one expected the ferocity of their attacks. With few other competitive election campaigns as distraction, the newspaper editorialized against the plan eight times. News stories negatively framed the open space issues, and were laden with anti-environmental characterizations. In its most heavily spun story, the News portrayed the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce's decision to stay neutral as a "minor setback" to the parks campaign. Funny thing: we considered their decision not to oppose the plan as a major victory, indicating that the community's most outspoken anti-tax voice was unopposed to a new parks tax.

Support Ran Deep and Wide

But the newspaper was the only active opposition. Meanwhile, our campaign was attracting support from every corner of Ann Arbor. Former city councilpersons Virginia Johansen and Nelson Meade - Republican and Democrat, respectively - co-chaired the People For Parks campaign. Virtually all prominent Democrat public officials endorsed the proposal, as did a number of well-known Republicans, including former state commerce department director Keith Molin and local real estate developer Bill Milliken. Many downtown business leaders, affordable housing activists, and university officials endorsed the parks plan. Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, and former city councilperson Susan Greenberg played critical roles on the campaign committee.

Still, conventional wisdom holds that opponents only need to raise doubts in voters' minds to defeat a tax proposal, no matter what its virtues. And the newspaper was emptying buckets of ink to raise doubts. So the campaign mobilized the summer's petition-circulating volunteers for one more round. In October, dozens more people hit the streets and the telephones, leafletting their neighborhoods and reminding people to vote. As in the summer, the Ecology Center's office was transformed for a few weeks into an informal campaign headquarters.

More so than any other person or group, Doug Cowherd guided the campaign to its eventual triumph. Cowherd, a financial advisor and chair of the Sierra Club's Huron Valley Group, initiated discussions of the ballot proposal, shepherded it through the city's parks advisory commission and city council, oversaw the campaign's media strategy, and spent innumerable hours making sure details were handled correctly.

"When my baby daughter is my age," Cowherd said, " I think she'll be very grateful to the citizens of Ann Arbor who worked so hard to save 200 acres of the best remaining open space."

Election day was rainy and cold - another bad sign, according to the pundits, since a low turnout is usually top-heavy with conservative and anti-tax voters. But as things turned out, even conservative precincts voted for open space. The campaign won the vote in every city ward and in all but three of Ann Arbor's 64 precincts. The 65% "yes" vote surprised even the proposal's staunchest supporters.

The ballot victory restores and builds on the momentum for land preservation in Washtenaw County. Pittsfield Township activists have begun discussing their own parkland acquisition initiative, and several other townships - including Superior, Ann Arbor, Dexter, and Webster - have started researching methods for slowing the sprawl that's turned Washtenaw County into one of the state's fastest growing counties. The Saline and Chelsea areas have each initiated their own regional planning initiatives, and Washtenaw County will soon update its comprehensive land use plan.

With all these efforts underway, and with the drawing power of land preservation reestablished at the ballot box, it may only be a matter of time before another major anti-sprawl initiative comes forward in Washtenaw County.

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