EU e fdi$ an taUi Eighty-Five Years of Editorial Freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan CITY ELECTIONS-APRIL 7th Couincil candidate positions First Ward Wednesday, April 2, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 Rent Control: Defanging the slumlords David Goodman: HRP Karen Graf: Republican Liz Taylor: Democrat RENTAL HOUSING IN Ann Arbor is hard to find, especially in the central city, and that which is avail- able is greviously - exploitatively- overpriced. Next Monday, voters will have an opportunity to enact a rent control amendment to the City Charter. Rent control must be approved. In other areas, such measures have proven successful in curbing rents, while not drying up housing or low- ering maintenance on the existing structures. Those opposed to the rent control amendment have contended that both maintenance and the develop- ment of new housing would be sig- nificantly curtailed if the amendment is passed. NEITHER ARGUMENT RINGS par- ticularly true. The proposal con- tains a provision which would reward landlords for making improvements in their property. Also, no new con- struction has taken place in the cen- tral city in the past six years - and there is no reason to assume that trend might change regardless of the vote on rent control. In addition, the rent control amendment establishes an elected board to oversee implementation of the proposal. This will allow a good deal of flexibility and accountability. Another plus in the amendment, as proposed, is the funding proce- dure for the board's operation - it should cost the taxpayers no addi- tional money. The entire project will be financed through an assessment against landlords based on rent charged. JN THE PAST landlords have been unresponsive to tenants, who have been left with only inadequate means of pursuing legitimate com- plaints against these powerful barons. The rent control board should pro- vide a forum for airing and solving these problems. In the same vein, it would also give landlords a fair hear- ing on their grievances. An oft-heard criticism of the mea- sure is that as a City Charter amend- ment, the proposal cannot be easily changed, if difficulties arise. To be sure, with an issue as com- plex as rent control, there could be many potential problems in imple- mentation and day-to-day opera- tions. But these concerns are far less weighty than the immediate need to put the brakes on the cost of rental housing in Ann Arbor. Thus far stu- dents and low-incene tenants have suffered the most as a result of the Ann Arbor housing mess. Rent con- trol can help alleviate that situation. Voe yes on the rent control amend- ment. HRP'S David Goodman helped form a group which stopped County funding for the ERIM war research fa- cility. He also organized a coalition which fought the destruction of the historic Nickels house for a new Mc Donalds restaurant. Goodman worked to set up a committee which sought more community service funds from federal revenue sharing money. A member of HRP City Council committee for two years, Goodman was formerly a technical employee in the U-M micro- biology department, and currently is a student at the University. David Goodman, twenty-two, has been a resident of Ann Arbor since 1971. A S THE HRP candidate in this ward, I represent the only party in Ann Arbor which has consistently worked for real alternatives in this city. After the first Human Rights Party candidates were elected to City Council three years ago, a series of major changes occured: funding of community from general federal revenue sharing funds, initiating an anti-rape program, and broadening the Human Rights Ordinance to protect women, students, and gays. On April 7, you can again elect a Councilperson who will actively work to reorient City Hall towards the needs of people. I feel that I have already demonstrated my ability to initiate change through my history of community involvement. The HRP and I have continually pushed for many interests of first ward residents. We recently intro- duced a resolution to prohibit police from using hollow- point bullets, banned from international warfare. WE ALSO WROTE and introduced ordinances to eliminate victimless crimes and discrimination in hous- ing for people on public assistance. HRP is leading the fight to institute a community control board with power to set police priorities and practices. My Democratic opponent rejects the plan and suggests "foot patrols" as the answer HRP has placed two important issues on the ballot for voters to enact. I am the only First Ward candidate Ito support rent control and day care funding. My Demo- cratic opponent asks voters to wait until that party has a Council majority to get such changes. You will not find the politicians of the other parties organizing with the unions against large corporations, with students against the University, or with tenants against the big landlords. HRP does this and more. ON ELECTION DAY, consider which party has agi- tated consistently for a new society based on meeting people's needs. A vote for the Human Rights Party will strengthen that movement. Karen Graf, 29, holds a BS degree from Eastern Michigan University. She taught school for seven years in the Wayne-Westland school district, and is now a resource teacher with Project Metric. She has lived in Ann Arbor for ten years. A S A RESIDENT of Ann Arbor, I have been most impressed by the sound and responsible way our city is being managed by Mayor Stephenson and our Republican majority on council. The Community De- velopment Revenue Sharing program places a great responsibility on citizens and the leadership of our city. We must spend this money wisely, through pro- grams that will benefit the people and the city as a whole. Our Republican majority on council have demonstrated their ability to deal responsibly with fin- ancial matters and, through well conceived programs, are trying to bring about a better quality of life in Ann Arbor. As your councilperson, I will continue to represent sound spending and integrity in local govern- ment. THE FIRST WARD has upcoming projects that will affect its citizens: a new community center; de- velopment of Bird Hills and Barton Park; and a share in the Community Revenue Program. Of concern to our senior citizens is the placement of the Community. Center and of parents in the community, when it will be completed and what it will house. There are con- cerns we need to work on together to arrive at the best possible solutions for all. Again, we come to the Community Development Revenue Sharing program. The Citizens Committee on Community De- velopment has suggested various ways of spending this money. I feel we in the First Ward need a good share of this money to spend in areas such as hous- ing, community service, and public works. If elected, I will strive for a justified distribution of money given through this program. WE HAVE LONG needed a managed growth policy for our city as suggested by the city administrator. Without such a tool we've experienced difficulty when developers,want to build a project which meets zoning designation, but is undesirable to local residents. I would concur with Mr. Murray - a policy of this nature is overdue. But it must be a policy which meets community needs and offers community input. Since this is my first endeavor in politics, I am lacking in political experience. However, I feel I pos- sess the ability and energy to represent the needs, concerns, and the attitudes of the citizens of the First Ward. I represent no special interests other than those of concerned citizens. Liz Taylor has just completed a two-year term of office ds Washtenaw County Commissioner from the 15th district. She served as chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee, Budget Committee, the Grants Subcommittee, and the Education and Social Services Committee. She has a master's degree in social work and is currently employed as a research associate at the Institute for Social Research. A NN ARBOR NEEDS effective r-t -otrrl We need a rent control ordinance which can be readily adjusted to meet 'the real needs of our community. We need a rent control law that will protect the ten- ant, not destroy the rental housing market upon which the tenant depends. Despite all you hear to the contrary, rent control by itself will not solve all our housing problems. Other measures apart from rent control must be used. As a member of a Democratic majority on City Council I will vote to pass a fair rental practices ordinance. Such an ordinance would contain rent control provisions, but it wouldn't stop there. PUBLIC UTILITIES which provide important com- munity services should be controlled by the public. Un- der private ownership cable TV service has steadily eroded until it now seems likely that it will be taken over by a West Coastconglomerate. The city should acquire the cable system and operate it as a public utility. I support carrying out a feasibility study to deter- mine whether municipal ownership of electrical utili- ties is a practical alternative for Ann Arbor. Municipal utility companies have a long history in this country, and they have traditionally provided power at cheaper rates than commercial utilities. POLICE-COMMUNITY relations must be based on mutual trust and understanding. This cannot be ac- complished by setting up a new bureaucratic review board, which will be only one more barrier between the police and the community. Police officers should be put on foot patrols, especially in the central city area. Their physical presence helps to prevent many of the street crimes which now occur in those areas. When the community and the police come to know one another through personal contact rather than through the windshield of a prowl car, they begin to respect and understand one another. This is the only atmosphere in which real community control of the police can occur. Dsay Care: The spirit is willing, 1but... AY CARE IS an important con- cern - one which should receive the city's responsibile attention and support. But that element of respon- sibility is lacking in the well-intend- ed, though poorly drafted, City Char- ter Amendment calling for municipal funding of local, non-profit day care centers. The Daily cannot endorse the pro- posal because of its grossly ambigu- ous wording and lack of stringent safeguards with respect to the disper- sal of funds. However, should this measure be voted down, as we hope it will, City Council must move expeditiously to enact an effective plan to financial- ly support the worthwhile projects carried on by the centers, The amendment calls for alloca- tion of at least 1.7 per cent of all city revenues to child care. Because the wording is sloppy, this could mean that as much as $565,000 would be spent on day care - more than twice what was originally intended. While this figure may well be equit- able, fixing budget allocations via a charter amendment is a poor prece- dent to establish - leaving the door open to similarly rigid funding for such agencies as the police depart- ment, which might not be deserving of the suggested monies. . Likewise, skimming the 1.7 per cent off the top of all city income creates mounds of bureaucratic red tape, especially with regard to state and federal grants which generally must be used in their entirety for very specific purposes other than day care. Thus, compliance with the amendment would require diversion of funds from other projects to day care in an amount equivalent to 1.7 per cent of those grants. Aside from this jumble of paper- work ,a most disturbing aspect of the proposal is its insufficient control over the money once it has been dis- pursed. There are few guarantees the funds will be spent either wisely or efficiently by the day care center ad- ministrators. No one within city hall - neither members of the administration or City Council - will be able to moni- tor the use of the nearly $600,000 that would be provided if the amend- ment passes. In summation, the day care amendment is a case of righteous in- tent obscuring faulty implementa- tion. While action in and of itself is important, that alone is not enough -the effort must be viable and ac- countable. Second Ward Carol Jones: Democrat Robert McDonoug h Republican Frank Shoichet: HRP Door-to-Door: Uneaging the electorate THE REPUBLICAN - DOMINATED City Council, by drastically cut- ting back the number of student vot- er registration sites, has proven the urgent need for the success of the door-to-door voter registration ballot issues GOP council members, in a fit of vengeance after discovering few Uni- versity students vote Republican, knocked the Fishbowl and the Public Health Library out of commission as registration sites. The Daily strongly endorses the voter registration proposal and urges anyone in favor of citizen participa- tion in the democratic process to vote for it. The ballot issue, if passed, would require the city clerk to appoint up to two per cent of the voters in the last mayoral election -some 670 neo- ple -- as volunteer deputy registrars who could then set up voter registra- tion sites anywhere in the city and conduct door-to-door registration. OREGON AND CANADA HAVE reg- istration systems similar to the charter proposal and have proven the system viable and free of "elec- tion fraud," which local opponents charge would happen under door-to- door. The entire system would be under careful examination by the city clerk and in no way could be "conducive to election fraud," as Attorney General Frank Kelley claims. WITH REGISTRATION sites open only from nine to five working people find it difficult to leave their jobs in order to register; the elderly and invalid can hardly be exoected to maka their wav to snm ristant Carol Jones is 21 years old and a life-long resident of Ann Arbor. She received her B.A. in Urban Studies last August from the U-M Residential College and is presently working towards a Masters Degree in Public Policy. I'M OFTEN asked why I'm a Democrat instead of HRP. The answer is simple. I believe the. Demo- cratic Party in Ann Arbor has done more, and is able to do more for the people of this city than either of the other two parties. Democrats produced the Human Rights Ordinance and the Human Rights Department, a stronger Housing Code with daily fines for violations, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority bus system, the first mari- juana ordinance. Democrats began city funding for child care on May 5, 1969, barely four weeks after taking control of the city for the first time in 40 years. FOR MONTHS, HRP had been telling us that the Day Care Charter Amendment would cost $300,000. Now we find it's closer to $600,000 because Frank Shoichet blew the wording. I used to think the amendment would pass, and I still hope it does, but HRP and Shoichet's ineptness may have killed its chances. What has HRP done for tenants? Two charter amend- ments. Correction, two charter amendment proposals. If HRP really wanted to enact rent control, as I do, they wouldn't have done it in this partisan way. That's what I mean when I say HRP chooses issues for their political exploitability. . ANOTHER ISSUE where Democrats have led is voter registration. It was a Democratic-sponsored law- suit that gave students the right to vote where they go to school. Democrats initiated door-to-door registra- tion in 1971. Meanwhile, HRP was writing another pub- Bob McDonough is a graduate student in the Business School. He has resided in Ann Arbor for five years, during which time he has been active in University and Community service. He is a Resident Advisor at Couz- ens Hall. SpHE APRIL 7 election .will decide the course of gov- ernment in the City of Ann Arbor during the last half of this decade. The question at hand for the second ward voters is whether they will choose as their city councilperson a member of the Democratic Party, a party currently scandalized by its recent attempt to subvert the electoral process in the second ward with its own brand of political dirty trickery, a repre- sentative of the HRP, a party which seems unable to muster support even within its own ranks with its headline grabbing radical rhetoric, or this candidate, a newcomer to city politics who has had his fill of the irresponsible shenanigans of the Democratic and hu- man Rights parties in the second ward. IT IS TIME for a change in the second ward. While my opponents, if elected, will be working toward the furtherance of their own partisan ambitions, I will be pushing for what I consider vital changes in the focus of services provided by the City of Ann Arbor for its people. The City must demonstrate effective support for the consumer. To this end we must enact measures which will give a break to the consumer at the super- market, at the auto repair shop, when buying or renting a home, when fighting a public utility, or trying to convince a giant corporation that consumer sov- ereignty is not just a concept on the pages of econ- omics textbooks, but is a viable force in the market place. The City should encourage and lend aid to the consumer who wishes to establish consumer co- operatives so as to be better able to confront those who would otherwise be able to take advantage of the unsuspecting individual. IT IS ALSO time that Ann Arbor establishes itself .. Frank Shoichet, 25, of 633 Church Street, IERP's Second Ward candidate, wil graduate in May from the University of Michigan Law School. A past Mich- igan Democratic Party Political Reform Commission member, he wrote this years Day Care and Rent con- trol funding ballot proposals, and has authored several other human service oriented proposals over the past three years. In 1973, he was narrowly defeated in a bid for the Second ward seat. AS A SECOND WARD candidate, housing is my first concern. In America today, 90 per cent of new residential construction is beyond the price range of 64 per cent of the people. Even in 'prosperous' Ann Arbor the 'free enterprise' system has failed. To protect the immediate interests of tenants, HRP has placed an improvemed rent control program on the ballot. It meets many of the criticisms levelled at last year's plan, while toughening restrictions on landlord abuses. It deserves support. The most important step we can all take is to work with the new group revitalizing the Tenants' Un- ion. Only organized tenant militancy has the political power to force substantial changes in city and Univer- sity policy. Mobilizing that power is the most import- ant element of a rent control strategy. THE HRP DAY-CARE funding proposal (1.7 per cent of the city budget) appearing on the April ballot can be an important step in giving priority to human needs. The 993 Ann Arbor day care spaces do not meet the needs of the 2400 young people in single-parent famil- ies, the 2100 women in the labor force with children under six, and the people in the 1500 Northwood apart- ment units that have no day care facility at all. Manipulating such rules of the game as voter registration has long been a favorite tactic of those in nowenre necinll with suc h ritical vonte a rent