Vote 2015: Meet Saline City Council Candidate Lee Bourgoin

City of Saline voters will elect three people to city council in the Nov. 3 election. The four candidates are Lee Bourgoin, Linda TerHaar, Jack Ceo and Heidi McClelland.

Name: Lee Bourgoin
Age: 69
Family: Married 33 years to my wife Sheila Collins Bourgoin who is a fine artist, marketing graphics designer and amateur natural area conservator.  Our two kids went through all grades of our excellent Saline Area Schools, so I want to help the schools remain the best.  Mike is working as a computer software engineer, after recently graduating from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Elizabeth is a junior at Eastern Michigan University studying social work and psychology.
Occupation/Business: Retired, Businessman & Public Administrator
Relevant Experience/Education: Being an altar boy in the Catholic Church taught me the virtue of truthfulness, the rewards of faithful efforts and the obligation to treat others as I want to be treated.  From a poor family, I worked to pay my way to get a BS in Electrical Engineering, then a Master's in Social Work.  I served as an officer in the Vietnam War, where I learned that others are often dependent on our actions. With my wife I had a successful manufacturing business for about 15 years, learning how to serving customers.  My professional level training was at Harvard University with a second Master’s in City and Regional Planning and then a PhD in Urban Planning with an economic development focus.  I have served about 30 years in local government with the citizens as my customers as a town administrator, business manager, city manager, finance director and city council member.

Why do you want to serve on Saline City Council?

I am seeking to return to one of the three seats available this year on the City Council, to continue to try to improve citizens’ lives.  My goals are more open government (with accountability to the community) and lowering city taxes back down, both done while helping the schools and gradually improving all of our essential services. 

Open government seeks proper feedback on community values and is factually candid.  Paul Harvey used to say “now for the rest of the story”.  It also means accountability to the community. 

My belief is that properly measured feedback will show community values that are not for wasteful spending.  In my view the community values are also against moving the trash from near a tavern to near the Presbyterian Church.

My website shows 27 ways to lower the City of Saline taxes that have doubled, while the municipal taxes in our adjoining communities did not double.  These 27 items were elaborated when I ran for mayor last year, and they now continue to be valid and apply in full.  Most urgent are bonding retirement costs prior to this December in order to gain about $800 per average taxpayer over time.  Other priorities for greatly improving our finances are jump-starting community residential growth, reorienting our public real estate assets to better align with a more beneficial future and avoiding money pits. 

Why should voters care about city taxes essentially doubling to 16.28 mills?  Think for a minute about a Pittsfield homeowner maybe one mile away from you in a subdivision near the high school, who pays about $1,000 less annually at a low municipal property tax rate that has not doubled over the past couple of decades. 

During about 45 working years that difference each year can mount up to become more than half of someone’s retirement funds or be enough to put a kid through college.  The various levels of government through taxes and fees can take over half of a person’s earnings.  This can be especially hard for the most vulnerable. 

Why should voters elect you to Saline City Council?

Voters will want to elect me if they want more open government (with accountability to the community) and they want to lower taxes back down that have doubled, both done while helping the schools and gradually improving all of our essential services.

The duty of the City Council is to keep ourselves accountable, in achieving measureable progress to improve citizens’ lives.  It is not to just provide a rubber-stamp approval of bureaucratic biweekly agenda items, nor is it to primarily serve a few businesses near the four corners area. 

In recent years the City Council has been dominated by those whose families live/work within about three blocks of the four corners intersection at Michigan Avenue and Ann Arbor Street. This has even included someone paid by the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce.

I believe that Saline needs a City Council who have public administrative capabilities and whose first thought is to improve the lives of citizens in all of the city’s residential neighborhoods.   We should especially be careful of those who are most vulnerable in our community.  Thus Saline needs the City Council to be mostly composed of those from the outlying residential neighborhoods.  What I think we need on the City Council is a good representation from the neighborhoods, with civil discourse of the various ideas in a more open style of government.

My home is on the west side of the Saline River.  I am an alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, was a successful businessman for about 15 years and was a public administrator for about 30 years.  It is very helpful if at least part of the board knows just how the city works.  For the last 25 years I have clearly been the strongest municipal employee in terms of budgeting and finance.

Throughout our lives all of my family has volunteered in connection with the Saline Area Schools, Food Gatherers, the Delonis Shelter, Saline Area Social Service, the Humane Society, the Saline Celtic Festival plus other events, the Kiwanis Club of Saline, and construction plus maintenance of the ROMP play structure.  I have also volunteered with the United Way, the Rotary Club, the Knights of Columbus, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Saline Area Resource Council, and Saline Main Street.  My wife and I are glad to have passed on to our kids the value of service to the community.

Name a few things Saline does very well. Name a few areas where Saline needs improvement.

The community of Saline has done many things well, as shown by Bloomberg Businessweek naming Saline the Best Place to Raise Kids in the entire State of Michigan for 2013.  Saline was also ranked the 52nd safest city in Michigan in March 2015 by Value Penguin, placing us at least in the top fifth for safety.  From among the 849 high schools in Michigan, U.S. News  & World Report ranked Saline High School as the 6th best overall.  It also ranked our high school the 102nd best nationwide for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) 

Part of this is that Saline is a nice community with supportive citizens, fortunately located on the outskirts of Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan consistently gets ranked among the best couple of dozen universities in the world.   Part of it was the careful planning decades ago to develop a nice community that will support great schools and maintain nice safe neighborhoods. 

Right now everyone in the city would benefit by more open government (with accountability to the community) and lower the city taxes.  Property taxes in the city have essentially doubled over the years, but those of our adjacent communities have not.  It is very possible for us to progressively grow our community residential boundaries in order to achieve the lower taxes from a right-sized tax base, while also helping the schools. 

No community is absolutely perfect, without the need for improvement.  One aspect of this is the alarming growth of substance abuse among teenagers, especially due to the availability of lower-priced street drugs that may also be laced with additive and harmful chemicals.  I am very much in favor of the task force that has been established to combat this threat.  Although many people in our community are well off, we also need to assist families that are at-risk or in need.

The city has gone back and forth on limits in the downtown parking lots. Should Saline enforce parking lot regulations with parking tickets? Does Saline need more downtown parking, and if so, would you support the acquisition of more property?

During the past few years the City Council has had the ability to resolve the controversial downtown parking issue.  Action should be taken without delay.  We should stop the parking tickets, which have a cost to enforce and are also anti-business both due to potential customers hearing about the controversy and due to people actually receiving tickets.  Instead we should advertise ample free parking at the four corners, in all four directions of the compass.  We would just enforce the ban on no overnight parking, with any needed towing in the wee hours well after midnight.

About 50 years ago I read The City in History by Lewis Mumford in which he described the organic nature of cities.  Cities have served as sanctuaries and places to gather; they can be reshaped for cultural needs in the suburban future.  That thought pattern of adjusting to cultural needs melds perfectly well with the ideas in Jeff Speck’s Walkable City in which he says that “parking is destiny”.  He says “it is the not-so-hidden force determining the life and death of many a downtown.”

During the past 20 years I have seen several novice and professional reviews of the downtown parking, which have all concluded that the only parking lot with a bind is in the northeast direction of the compass at the four corners --- from behind Dan’s Tavern to Smoke BBQ to behind the First Presbyterian Church.  So we should immediately develop additional parking at the corner of Hall Street and McKay Street, which should provide a net of about 15 additional spots.  The parking ticket issue can then just go away.

To be accountable to the community, we should consider multi-year parking changes to the urban design that will improve citizens’ lives over time.  To make South Ann Arbor better for our citizens, the city should sell the frontage in that parking lot to obtain an interesting retail use to eliminate the architectural “missing tooth” between Benito’s and the Grossman building.  Studies have shown that parking should be in the rear of continuous interesting retail facades to encourage browsing, since people will not usually walk more than 75 feet unless they have a fixed destination. 

About twenty years ago as the City Manager, I carried out the city wishes to develop two parking lots behind Comerica Bank which attracted Mac’s Acadian Seafood and others to fill empty storefronts.  We should now work to help the owners of the former Steeb Dodge, buying the back part of that open land for future public use.  We should also help the owner of 188 E. Michigan Avenue (the old R & B building) to enable better-suited downtown reuse, which in part might include additional public parking on part of the open land.

A common refrain heard from some residents is that the city shouldn’t be spending money on events and activities for the community. Do you believe that? Why or why not?

The cost of events is a very minor issue composed of a grain of truth and a pound of nonsense.  My wife and I over the years have volunteered to the very beneficial Saline Celtic Festival, which we think was unfairly made a whipping boy.  For community events and downtown activities, the city has annually had up to about $9 (or less) total per taxpayer of direct costs and up to about $40 (or less) total per taxpayer of indirect costs. 

In the past five years our citizens would have been much better served by the City Council keeping its eye on the ball by achieving high gains from more timely expansion of our community housing boundaries.  Another high-priority item that has caused large losses since 2012 is bonding the retiree unfunded liability which now has a December 2015 deadline to provide about $800 benefit per taxpayer or be lost forever.

While on the City Council, I agreed for the city to support our own city-related “community” events and to avoid carrying the costs for outside events like fund–raising races even if they were charitable.  I also agreed to up to the $40 per taxpayer costs indirectly during the startup of Saline Main Street, which also promotes additional retail events in collaboration with the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce. It is now time that Main Street stands on its own, reducing those city costs to zero.  The proper role of city government is to provide a beneficial environment for business including excellent infrastructure.  The city specifically should not spend public tax dollars for retail events.

Instead of the distraction of even a copy-cat annual special meeting of the City Council, we need to provide our staff a set of “guidelines” to promptly process event request costs.  What I consider our major non-retail community events are Winterfest, the Memorial Day Parade, the 24-Hour Relay, the Summer Music Series, the Saline Celtic Festival, Summerfest, the Saline High School Pep Rally, the Rentschler Farm Closing, Oktoberfest, the Saline Fair Parade, the Scarecrow Contest, and the Christmas Parade.

The up to $9 per taxpayer pales in comparison to about $500 to over $1,000 more paid each and every year due to the approximate doubling of our property taxes over the past decade or two.  Somewhat less than half of the events costs is an on-paper charge for using our own existing equipment or using some hours from existing employees who will be paid whether we use employee time on events or not.  So the new out-of-pocket costs for all events is up to $5,50 annually per average taxpayer.  I think our community values do support up to $0.46 per month per taxpayer for events that are part of our community character.  Let’s spend City Council time on the other more important things to improve citizens’ lives.

Should the city actively encourage growth (by annexation or otherwise)? Why or why not?

Community growth will make the tax base more proportional to the current cost of our essential services, population growth will bring more state funds to the city once we exceed 10,000 population, and the growth in the number of students will help the schools by bringing in more money from the state.  It’s important to lower city property taxes back down that have doubled, but it’s also important that the school have sufficient funds to do their job well because the community children are our future.

Our excellent essential city services must not deteriorate -- public safety (police, fire, EMS), pure drinking water, good roads, and well-maintained parks plus nice tree-lined neighborhoods.  Growth in additional other "discretionary" spending create a burden that can cut into taxpayer retirement funds or into college funds for their kids.

Ten to fifteen years ago as the lead person for the city in economic development, I worked with Mayor Gretchen Driskell and City Manager Larry Stoever in attracting more industries to the city than had ever been done.  Our process including assistance from Superintendent Gary Roubal was action-oriented, in order to get things done without unnecessary red tape.  This was recognized by the Business Review in their opinion piece entitled “Saline Gets It Right for Business”.  The Saline Area Chamber of Commerce honored me for “Positive Economic Growth”.   Success as a city staff member came by carrying out the good positive direction set by the City Council in the prior decade.   

Times have changed with new state laws, so future new industries will no longer support communities with personal property tax.  We need to change the orientation of our city-owned land to stop chasing smokestacks, or even cleaner heavy industries.  Instead we need to choose higher-quality facilities that will better benefit our community, such as medical or high-technology office buildings.  We also need some additional residential growth to help our tax base and to help the schools.

The Rec Center membership is up 10 percent, but the facility has been dogged by expensive repairs. Do you favor continued support of the community facility? Why or why not? Are there ways to better financially sustain the center? Or is it just time to accept that such a facility comes with costs?

The membership at the Recreation Center seems to go up about 10% during improving economic times and go down about 10% during an economic downturn. 

We can best be accountable to the community on this issue by properly measuring taxpayer feedback to determine which alternative they would prefer:

Highest cost:  continue paying for net capital and operating costs with higher city taxes, which since 1990 have been about $3,600 (averaging about $180 per year) for the average taxpayer whether using the facility or not, and those who use the facility also pay the membership fees on top of the taxes.  The Tefft Park area is halfway through a 50 year span since about 1989 after which this area will again become part of Pittsfield Township.

Lower cost:  ballot vote to eliminate the about 37 acres of Tefft Park area as a city park, in order to offer to transfer the facility to Washtenaw County which already taxes City of Saline residents a county recreation tax.  The may be only fair because of the county tax and the location which is more convenient to some Pittsfield residents, but it may involve some negotiations because the county at first will not want to obtain these facilities unless it knows there is the alternative of transfer into private use.

Net gain:  ballot vote to eliminate the about 37 acres of Tefft Park area as a city park which is slated to revert to Pittsfield Township in about two dozen years, in order to transfer the facility into public use and to also transfer the land for financial gain to the city which could be a gain for about $500 to $2,000 tax reduction per city taxpayer.

To my knowledge there many are other sports facilities of various kinds within a 10-mile drive, so it is likely that our facility would have some market value.  The land would likely have value in part for sports purposes, plus in part for residential purposes that could also help the schools with additional students.  Some of the basic plans at competitive facilities are Planet Fitness that averages about $15 per month and Powerhouse Gym that averages about $35 per month.

Despite the improved economy and the work of many officials, there are still vacancies and underutilized commercial buildings and property downtown, on the west end, and at the shopping plazas on the east side. What approach should the city take to find the right tenants?

Underutilized facilities such as the commercial properties are suffering for the same major reason that led to the hospital moving out, for the same reason the schools have a lesser amount of operating funds, and the same reason that existing community businesses do not have more customers.

All have suffered due to our own governmental procedures thwarting the community housing growth that has been knocking on the door, seeking to continue the beneficial expansion of our community.  Not all communities always benefit from expansion, but right-sizing our community would.  Jump-starting housing development growth is one key element in lowering city taxes back down.  Lower taxes make all houses and commercial buildings instantly become more valuable, easier to sell, and easier to support while using them.

The high population growth accompanying the community housing growth would increase the number of school children, so that the schools would benefit by getting more state funds due to a higher student count.  Taxpayers would benefit from a lower tax rate due to a greater tax base, because the current city facilities as well as its operations are run on proportionately too small a tax base.  The hospital would not likely quickly return even if they saw a growing customer base, because of big lump-sum costs in relocating.

It’s not the city’s job to find tenants, that’s a job for a real estate professional in conjunction with a property owner.  But it is the city’s job to have a pro-business environment without a level of resistance that thwarts progress.  One of the four Saline Main Street teams is on economic development, which does seek to attract businesses to the city and to beneficially repurpose existing spaces.  From the city’s point of view it is the Mayor’s role to provide a message relating that the city staff will be supportive, as the Main Street team speaks to property owners plus their realtors plus potential interested businesses.

As equally important as commercial properties are those currently labeled industrial, mostly owned by the city.  These need to be reoriented towards a better future use.  The industrial sector in America has shrunk as jobs have fled. State government recently gave industrial owners a $1.8 billion reduction in personal property taxes that industries had been paying to communities. Then the state government has been considering how to additionally tax citizens about that same amount for roads.  Without the future personal property taxes from industry for the community, the city should reorient the land it owns to better community-suited functions that will more profitably absorb this land.

There were issues this year that cast the DPW and SPD in a negative light. What should be done from the council table to ensure that public trust in the city departments is well-placed?

The public trust requires open government and accountability to the community.  President Truman said the buck stops here, and since then that has been the phrase often used to say responsibility rests with the top management.  In Saline, the City Council is supposed to bear the general responsibility for getting things done properly and the City Manager has the specific responsibility for getting things done properly.  In Saline I have noted several items that relate to accountability.

A couple of decades ago, I was the City Manager in Saline when allegations of employee wrongdoing came up.  Since responsibility ends at the top, I knew I could also be at risk.  Yet my professional standards make ne realize that accountability to the community means having a totally independent prosecutor look into it.  Fortunately, at that time the investigation by the State Police cleared all of our employees of any wrongdoing.

Half a year ago the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office conducted an investigation into two of our Department of Public Works employees for accepting $100 in cash on the weekend.  The cash was from a property owner apparently doing a project without yet having obtained a required permit.  The prosecutor’s office did not determine any wrongdoing by the department employee or by the department head.  But the review showed confusion about exactly what to do and when.  To me this is clearly a breakdown at the City Manager level, not at the employee level. There was a lack of proper management direction coming from the top.  A couple of decades ago our employees were allowed to accept small gifts (considered “de minimus”) if the value of the cash tip, meal or item like sports tickets was no more than $30 and as the City Manager I had the responsibility of ensuring that everyone was aware of it.  A couple of decades later what is considered small is likely at least twice what is was then, but management has the specific responsibility of managing on this issue rather than the City Council.

Accountability to the community means having a totally independent prosecutor look into allegations of employee wrongdoing.  During recent weeks the issue of potential wrongdoing came up related to our Police Department in part of allegations of timesheet fraud plus of sex with under-aged girls riding at night in police cars and additionally in part of allegations that upper management bungled the investigations.  Rather than the city hiring consultants at $100 per hour in addition to their defense attorneys, a totally above-board public accountability instead requires it to be done by the State Police, because neither the City Manager nor the City Council has any paycheck control over them.    

Another issue on which there should be accountability to the community is the loss from excessive professional services including the $216,046 of unnecessary legal costs on the DPW roof failure.  Attorney Grossman had recommended settling pretty much the way it ended up years later, after Saline hired on an Assistant Manager from elsewhere and changed his hat to City Manager.  The City Council bears the general responsibility for getting things done properly and the City Manager has the specific responsibility for getting things done properly.  

Another issue on which there should be accountability to the community is the vote obtained for an unfounded tax increase in June of 2013.  In preparation for the vote, the City Council was presented a frighteningly dire picture of needing to avoid insolvency.  In fact after the higher tax bills were issued in July, the independent professional annual audit showed the exact opposite – the surplus cash in the General Fund jumped up by $137,652 more than the prior year by 6/30/13 just prior to the higher taxes to almost bump up against the target maximum surplus cash of 20%.  The City Council bears the general responsibility for getting things done properly and the City Manager has the specific responsibility for getting things done properly.  

My website shows the 27 ways I listed last year to lower back down our city taxes that have doubled.  The most immediate priorities are to jump-start development and to bond our retirement costs prior to the deadline this December.  Retirement bonding is projected to safely save over $600 per average taxpayer over time and to eliminate future liabilities.  Another is to avoid shifting an extra burden from industrial parks onto homeowners.  The City Council bears the general responsibility for getting things done properly and the City Manager has the specific responsibility for getting things done properly.  

The AAATA’s “The Ride” now connects just east of town in Pittsfield Township. What, if any, public transportation do you believe is needed in the City of Saline? When would you like to see it start? And will you support funding the service with tax dollars?

Saline already essentially has what it currently needs in the relatively cost-efficient People’s Express services.  These door-to-door rides are helpful in a way that fixed route services cannot reasonably compete at this time, all the way into our small community.  However it would be reasonable for the People’s Express to be used to and from nearby AAATA fixed route locations like the one near Walmart.  There may also be other residents that want to drive by car to those same fixed-route locations in order to park-and-ride into an urban area.

More than a dozen years ago then-AATA did a fairly expensive trial of a fixed route in a loop that I think started near connecting urban area buses at Briarwood Mall, through some principal city streets, to the Saline Hospital which was open at that time, and I think back to Briarwood with a swing through Meijer’s on Saline-Ann Arbor Road.  Most of the buses ran completely empty with only a few passengers in the entire day, even when the fares were heavily subsidized by federal funds.  We all want a way to pollute less, but it does not seem that our community has enough community housing development yet to extend fixed routes beyond the nearby Pittsfield locations.

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