I plan to vote "no" on 2026 Ann Arbor proposal E.
It presents itself as the first step towards municipal public electric utility.
But all it does is amend the city charter to create a new board of nine people, four to be appointed by council, five to be elected (one from each ward). We don't get an actual running electrical utility without buying the infrastructure from DTE. That will be expensive, and require another vote.
While proposal E, creating the board, requires only 50% to pass, state law says the eventual vote to actually acquire the utility needs 60%. And by that time voters will know more about the cost.
So, it's possible that the first vote will pass and the second will fail. In fact, my guess would be that's the most likely outcome.
In which case we're stuck with a useless board, and the need to elect members to it every four years, until we hold yet another referendum to dissolve it.
None of this is necessary. The city already runs utilities without the need for separate board with elected members.
If the goal is actually to create a municipal utility, we should focus on the difficult work of actually figuring out how to do that, how much it will cost, how long it will take, and how to build support for the required vote. That A2PP isn't doing that suggests they don't think the support is actually there--but, then, that's the problem to concentrate on, not on creating this unnecessary bureaucracy.