(This editorial has been revised to correct a factual error.)

In last year’s City Council and mayoral elections, one campaign theme we heard from the challengers was, “Ann Arbor doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.’’

Actually, it has both problems.

Mike Anglin

Stephen Rapundalo

Stephen Kunselman

Having just come out of a difficult and painful budget process in which it cut 30 positions from the city workforce -- including 20 in the police and fire departments -- the city still finds itself spending more out of its general fund than it’s taking in. And short of generating new revenue, its only solution will be to continue slashing services to a degree that we think the community will find untenable.

That is the hard reality faced by City Council. In the current election, incumbents and challengers need to address budget issues head-on, and voters must carefully choose the candidates who are best prepared to make the hard decisions that lie ahead.

In the Aug. 2 Democratic primary, there are three contested races. While incumbency has not particularly swayed us in past endorsement decisions, we do find that Council Members Stephen Rapundalo in the 2nd Ward, Stephen Kunselman in the 3rd Ward and Mike Anglin in the 5th Ward make the best case for why they should continue to serve, and we endorse them in this primary election.

Rapundalo and Kunselman, in particular, we find to be significantly better versed in the issues than their challengers, and this is not a great time to be bringing in newcomers with steep learning curves. We also find that while there are issues we disagree with each of the incumbents on, all have demonstrated something of an independent streak and a skepticism of past council actions that we think is needed going forward.

As is often the case in a primary election, there are not huge differences between challengers and incumbents on a variety of issues. That being the case, we look to which candidates are best prepared to address the over-arching issues -- which are primarily budgetary -- that will face City Council in the next two years. These include:

• Working with the largest employee unions to achieve real savings in benefit costs, something Rapundalo in particular has been an advocate of.
• Engaging the community in an honest discussion about what level of services residents want and what they are willing to pay for it. As we said in a recent editorial, the time has come to explore such revenue options as a Headlee override, or a city income tax coupled with a reduction in the property tax rate, get the community’s input and then put the best proposal to a vote of the people. Rapundalo has expressed some interest in an income tax option, Kunselman says he’s open to a Headlee override and Anglin is more interested in talking to the University of Michigan about a payment in lieu of taxes arrangement. Among the challengers, we have only heard Marwan Issa, opposing Kunselman in the 3rd Ward, directly expressed putting a revenue option in front of voters in combination with leaner spending.
• Caution in how the city proceeds with what’s being called the Fuller Road transit center, a multi-modal concept that calls for building a parking ramp near the University of Michigan Medical Center as a first phase. Rapundalo, Kunselman and Anglin express legitimate concern over how the city has constrained itself financially with past decisions on such major capital projects as the Police/Courts Building and the underground parking ramp being built on Fifth Avenue. We look forward to editorializing on this project in the near future, but generally agree with the incumbents that they need more clarity on what they are committing to in the short-term and long-term, and where the city’s portion of the cost would come from.

We find the challengers to be thoughtful and motivated to serve their community, but other than Tim Hull, who is challenging Rapundalo in the 2nd Ward, we were disappointed that they didn’t seem more informed on some of the important issues facing council. We particularly like the emphasis of 3rd Ward challenger Ingrid Ault on reducing city spending through more consolidation of services. Neal Elyakin, who is running against Anglin in the 5th Ward, also has some attractively progressive views on mass transit and housing. But on the whole, we didn’t find a challenger with the kind of incisiveness on issues or sharp differences on policy that made him or her a better choice than the incumbent.

We don’t believe in incumbency for incumbency’s sake. We do believe that in the challenging times ahead for the city, incumbents who are up to speed on the issues and understand how past decisions have helped create the problems the city is grappling with today are best poised to make the kinds of tough decisions that will have to be made in the next two years. We endorse Stephen Rapundalo, Stephen Kunselman and Mike Anglin in the primary. The winner in the 3rd and 5th Wards will face a Republican challenger in the general election, and we will go through a separate endorsement process for those races in November.