But first let me express my personal thank you to Joan Lowenstein, our current councilwoman. Joan has tirelessly served our ward for 6 years and deserves our appreciation. Joan is running for 15^th District judge and I wish her the best of luck in her new endeavor. She is open-minded, fair, and deliberate and will make an outstanding judge.

Many of you have asked me why I want to get involved with politics, especially Ann Arbor politics. That is very good question and I would like to address it because it gets right to the heart of what I plan to do if I am elected.

For much of the past half-century, it has been Ann Arbor’s good fortune to have two large and stable employers in the area. As a result, Ann Arbor has been isolated from the devastating effects of the Michigan and to a lesser extent the national business cycle that have inflicted considerable economic hardship on most of our great state. Over the past two years however there are a number of secular changes that have taken place in our economy that have created a “Perfect Storm” of events that have brought the current recession inside the boundaries of Washtenaw County and to the doors of our city.

Evidence of the sea change of economic events has become obvious to most of us but many of our residents and elected officials are still trying to do business as usual. Unfortunately, this time “it is different” and with the synergistic effects of the departure of Pfizer, the continued restructuring of our automobile industry and consequent job losses, the mortgage liquidity problem, declining real estate values, escalating health care costs and an already high tax structure, it is no wonder that many residents are finding it hard to make ends meet.

I love Ann Arbor and have made it home for myself and my family for 45 of my 60 years. So consider:

• How can I sit by and watch and listen to City Council debate spending $47M on a renovation for our municipal building while 2200 residents of Washtenaw County lost their homes in 2007?
• How can I watch a number of restaurants in our community struggle or close while an inexpensive liquor license is selfishly awarded to our municipal golf course?
• How can I not do something when our kids are all leaving, maybe for good, when we have solid developers that want to invest millions in downtown buildings, some that have been vacant for years and the City Council votes it down?
  

I am certain you have many of your own concerns and I would love to hear them. That is how participatory democracy works.

Rather than leaving the future of Ann Arbor to the whims of the politics as usual mindset, I would like to test my leadership skills, honed by military service and business building, to help Ann Arborites articulate a vision of where we would like to be in ten years, begin to put a world class team together to help get us there and then start to create an environment that will allow dedicated men and women to deliver on that promise.

Over the next few months, I will put together the specifics of my plans to keep Ann Arbor a great place to live work and raise a family. I welcome your ideas and suggestion and promise I will do my best to make sure that we all have a say in how we are going to get there.

Paid For by The Stewart Nelson For City Council Committee