Chris Taylor, a progressive Democrat, has been Mayor of Ann Arbor for 12 years.
He is seeking a final four-year term in the August primary, facing a well-known challenger, Democratic Socialist Yousef Rabhi, a Washtenaw County Commissioner and former state Representative.
It could be a close election. The popularity of elected officials tends to trend downward over time, and Taylor has also been part of some controversial decisions that have made dramatic changes to the city's downtown and its future.
Taylor is a member of the Ann Arbor City Council, and his vote counts the same as the others, but as mayor he still gets the lion’s share of praise or blame for changes that are generally unanimously approved by the council.
For years, the council has worked on policies designed to address the high cost of housing in Ann Arbor, approving a city-wide rezoning, including in established neighborhoods, to encourage housing density.
And, the council has approved controversial high-rise buildings throughout the downtown.
The fast and furious changes have sidelined a sizable group of residents who don't like what they’re seeing. Jim Kenyon has been a homeowner for 33 of the 42 years he's lived here.
"We've seen the skyline go from U Towers and … whatever the other high rise is called —" (it’s Tower Plaza; I had to look it up) “to, now, you can’t see across town," he told Michigan Public.
Kenyon strongly supports more affordable housing, but he thinks Taylor and the council have mostly just given tax breaks to rich developers for all those high rises.
"And whenever you have the entirety of city council just standing up and voting in lockstep with the mayor, there’s a problem," he said. "That’s groupthink."
Kenyon is among those who want a new mayor to slow the city’s roll. That’s exactly what worries James Weir, also a homeowner. He lives in a small home in the city's Water Hill neighborhood, close to downtown.
There’s a crying need for more affordable housing, Weir said, but he thinks mayoral candidate Yousef Rabhi's proposals are vague.
“I worry that he would come in as mayor, and he would stop the incremental progress that we’re making. If we’re going to do something different than the real meaningful progress that we're having right now, I need to know what that is," Weir said.
But Rabhi said his housing policy ideas are workable.
He's not against more housing density, but he calls it a trickle-down approach that can take decades to show an impact.
Rabhi said the current mayor had 12 years to fix the affordable housing problem and didn't, and overall housing prices have only gone up.
"What I have observed over the last 12 years is that Ann Arbor has become increasingly unaffordable for working people, for seniors, for young people and students, even for middle class people who can't afford to live in Ann Arbor anymore," Rabhi said. "It has become an exclusive, what I'm calling almost a country club town, where you have to afford a membership in order to live here. That's not something that is acceptable.
"We need to build houses for the people," Rahbi said. "Right now the strategy and the plan is, build million-dollar condos, two and a half million dollar condos, that no one can afford to live in."
One of Rabhi's proposals is that the city would build or buy houses, and place covenants on them that keep the value of the houses from increasing too much over time. In exchange for a discount, the seller gains some but not all the traditional market rate equity, and the house would be more affordable for the next buyer.
"We could also expand and create municipally run cooperatives on public land," Rabhi said.
In his view, the investments could be made without raising taxes, or de-funding parts of the city budget, by using revenue bonding. For affordable housing developments, revenue bonds would be paid off from rents from the tenants.
Taylor, the incumbent mayoral candidate, said the city has already explored that idea and found it wanting.
"Affordable housing rents are by their definition low. Affordable housing revenue is nowhere near enough to support new construction. That doesn’t make sense," he said. "It's not serious."
Taylor also said the claim that housing prices are only going up is wrong.
Rent-tracking websites show new high-rise apartments have driven vacancy rates higher, which last year drove rents lower by 4% to 6%. And city officials say Ann Arbor's on track to triple its number of affordable housing units in the next few years.
Taylor said he decided to run again because so much of what he and the city council have ushered in is on the cusp of being realized, including the citywide rezoning, as well as progress on a voter-approved Sustainable Energy Utility, which aims to reduce up-front costs for homeowners, businesses, and nonprofits to adopt solar roofs, home battery storage, and geothermal projects.
Taylor said he understands the nostalgia associated with an older, sleepier Ann Arbor, and said he's like everyone else: he misses some of his favorite Ann Arbor haunts, like Border's book store, where he met his wife, and Drakes, the iconic candy and sandwich shop, where the couple had their first date.
Both are long gone. But the world changes, he said.
"All successful cities change, all successful cities evolve, and Ann Arbor is no exception."
No matter who holds the mayor's gavel next year, change is definitely coming to the makeup of city council. There's no incumbent running in two of the five city council wards on the ballot, and most of those wards have a candidate aligned either with Taylor or Rabhi.
That could mean a little less unanimity at the meetings next year.
