Advocates of the charter amendments got off to a fast start, raising $60,000 by early June to buy lawn signs and other media. The opposition was still getting organized then, so Kitty B. Kahn designed her own. | Photo by John Hilton
One would repeal a 2018 charter amendment that reserves the space above the Library Lane underground parking structure for an urban park and civic-center commons called the Center of the City. The other would transfer the air rights to the Ann Arbor District Library next door for $1. Together, they’d enable construction of a new downtown library in a high-rise spanning both parcels.
Supporters of the ballot measures organized quickly, registering a ballot issue funding committee called Supporters of the Downtown Library in April. Treasurer Alex Lowe says that by early June they’d raised roughly $60,000 toward a target of $80,000 to $100,000. They’ll be spending the money on “sharing the positive message behind all the good things this new library proposal can do for the community, and helping to reach and get voters out to the polls.”
Lowe says that the decision to put the proposal on the ballot this year was “due to the urgent need for change.” He says that the existing library structure is deteriorating and “does not meet the standards of an award-winning library.”
Onna Solomon, secretary of the AADL’s elected board, is helping to spread the word. “We need a new downtown library one way or another,” she says. Combining the sites would provide flexibility and “more ability to really serve the community and build an incredible flagship library branch that is the anchor of our award-winning library system.”
Solomon says she has heard that people involved in the 2018 campaign are disappointed that the park didn’t come to fruition. But she has also heard from others who supported the park who are excited about the proposed plan. “The library taking that land and making it public space and having a way for there to be better community gatherings, public outdoor space, public indoor space for gathering, to me, feels like it’s in the spirit of what people were wanting for that space,” she says.
But concern has been brewing among those who helped pass the 2018 charter amendment. Elizabeth Nelson, who served on city council from 2018 to 2022, recently posted a YouTube video called “Giving Away Center of the City, Privatizing Public Library Space.” It describes the grassroots effort to raise money for the park and what she describes as the city’s failure to follow through. “Mayor Taylor and his supporters have consistently dismissed the results of the November 2018 election,” she says in the video. (Nelson did not respond to a request for comment.)
Old West Side resident Kitty B. Kahn was so troubled that she personally designed yard signs through her Zazzle print-on-demand online store and ordered ten of them. “When I learned that Mayor Taylor planned to have a special election in August to try to overturn the voice of the more than 26,000 people who voted to put the Center of the City in the City Charter, I felt I had to do something,” she emails. They say, “Vote No on A and B. Honor the People’s Vote for a Downtown Park!”
“These signs are my way of making sure that people know about the election,” Kahn writes. “I love libraries. I’m not at all opposed to libraries. It’s the ignoring of the results of the 2018 election to which I am opposed.”
In June, other opponents were belatedly mobilizing. A group called the Committee to Save Ann Arbor’s Parks launched a simple website, savea2parks.com, and registered a fundraising committee; no donation records were immediately available.
Rita Mitchell, president of the Library Green Conservancy, a nonprofit whose mission is to establish the Center of the City urban park, believes that the August special election date was chosen to minimize voter turnout. “The voters spoke in 2018. The choice of an off-cycle election [is] disappointing with respect to engaging the community in decision-making about public space,” she emails.
She says her group is concerned that the charter amendments lack “detail sufficient for voters to make informed decisions with respect to design, lack information on the private housing component, lack definition of the public space to be offered, and lack justification for giving away public land for $1 that was previously offered for sale for $10 million.”
She shared an ad that the group is running in this month’s Observer. It notes that descriptions of the proposed project “are not supported with any plan or design or legal document” and that the AADL “has repeatedly stated that they can accomplish the replacement of the downtown library without inclusion of the Library Lane site.”
Solomon says there’s strong support for the ballot measures. She points to an EPIC-MRA poll of 500 people—discussed at the Ann Arbor District Library’s April 28 board meeting—which found that nearly 45 percent would strongly support the ballot measures, with 28 percent somewhat supporting them, and only 16 percent saying they opposed them. (The remaining 11 percent responded “don’t know” or “not sure”—the pollsters group those in one category.)
Early voting sites will be open July 30 through August 3 at City Hall and the Malletts Creek, Traverwood, and Westgate libraries.