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Ann Arbor August 2022 primary

The August primary effectively determines the direction of our Ann Arbor's government. It's very quick to look up your ballot at https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index.

I recommend Christopher Taylor for mayor, and, for council:

ward 1: Cynthia Harrison
Ward 4: Dharma Akmon
Ward 5: Jenn Cornell

In wards 2 and 3, Chris Watson and Ayesha Ghazi Edwin are both uncontested. (But also, fortunately, both look great.)

All of them are sensible and dedicated to the kinds of changes we need.

Any plan dealing with climate change features transportation and land use prominently. See, for example, "Strategy 4" of Ann Arbor's A2Zero plan. We need to allow people to live in denser, more transit-friendly cities. At the local level we have a powerful lever in the form of zoning. Zoning for more housing supply also allows us to moderate housing prices, and to provide more services for the dollar: new housing brings in more tax dollars for transit, water, sewer, and roads, while the new expenses they bring are proportionately less, because it's more efficient to provide those services to a more compact population. All these candidates are people that understand that.

Also, the largest single component of Ann Arbor's city budget is for police, so I'm also happy to see Cynthia Harrison running, as she's been working locally on criminal justice reform for years.