ann arbor is overrated.

“Council race swerves to the left,” reports the News. So what’s so left about the new group of candidates? They “call themselves more ‘progressive’ than most of the current City Council members.” Well, if they call themselves progressive, then they must be. And as if that weren’t enough proof, they’re all endorsed by Progressives of Washtenaw, an organization that has the word “progressive” right in its name!

“The ‘progressive’ group differs from the majority of the City Council less on development and more on issues like affordable housing,” writes veteran News reporter Tom Gantert. “[Sabra] Briere’s backers have long said the current council is trying to shift affordable housing out of Ann Arbor and elsewhere into the county.”

We’ve been following this campaign pretty closely, and we don’t remember any of the POW!-endorsed (the exclamation point is part of the name) candidates making affordable housing any kind of priority, nor have we ever heard them charge that affordable housing is being forced into the townships. Every indication is that at least Briere and Mike Anglin are pure unreconstructed NIMBY candidates championing the interests of “the neighborhoods.” Does Tom Gantert know something we don’t? Because in the political climate of A2, allowing candidates to claim the “left” label on evidence this slim is something like the media in a normal town presenting a crop of council challengers with the headline, “Council Race Swerves Away from Baby-Sacrificing, Satan-Worshiping.”

Fifth Ward council candidate Mike Anglin identifies what’s wrong with A2 government today — too much action and decisiveness! “We have had too long a time of no discussion and rapid decision making,” he writes to a resident who expresses concern about the new storm water rates. Well, it’s about time that our elected officials started postponing more decisions.

So why haven’t we been picking on Anglin’s fellow candidate and ideological twin Sabra Briere? Her website, unfortunately, is a lot more polished and less fun, NIMBY lite in soothing green and blue pastels with vague prescriptions like “progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged” — sorry, “big buildings in themselves add nothing to our quality of life.”

A rejoinder to our Madison cheerleading by a commenter over at Ann Althouse’s (hey, another A-squared!) blog: “[A]s of 1991 the jail food in Ann Arbor was way better than Dane County’s.”

After 6 years in Ann Arbor, we’d somehow come to imagine Madison as a slightly bigger, slightly less expensive and overhyped version of Tree Town. Sure, it seemed edgy and hip when we were in high school in the Chicago suburbs, but it’s still a Midwestern college town, not unlike A2.

Apartment-hunting for a friend last weekend put an end to that particular misconception. A weekend of looking at spacious one-bedrooms with gleaming hardwood floors for $700 (heat included!), sitting on the terrace of the Wisconsin Union overlooking Lake Mendota (we think there’s some kind of river in A2, but we can’t remember exactly where it is) and having a $4.50 breakfast that would have been about $8.50 in the Deuce has convinced us that Madtown is everything A2 claims to be. (Well, except for Manhattan and Athens rolled into one.) And it’s even got 80 percent fewer insipid nicknames per capita!

Summer Festival board member Julie Fritz reiterates Judy McGovern’s point that the event’s workers are temporary. And young! Why do they need to be paid as much as real workers? Especially when it might mean that Ann Arborites could be deprived of “free performances of that colorful, pole-perching performing arts group from Australia called ‘Strange Fruit.’”

Fifth Ward city council primary candidate Mike Anglin answers for council the question “What is a Neighborhood?”

The purchase of a house in a particular neighborhood is for many who live in A2 a very thoroughly processed decision. The values that the family holds are focused in this decision…

In time, the home becomes an integral part of the person’s life. As family events take place in that space, the home becomes more intertwined in the homeowners’ lives. Neighbors become friends, and people come to identify with their homes and their neighborhood…

I urge you to show the public that you believe in neighborhoods

      or perhaps you do not?

(Inexplicable indentation choice his.)

Anglin may not know this, but there are actually some people in A2 who live in buildings that they don’t own. Some of them live alone. And these “renters” and “singles” are even allowed to vote in primary elections! Like this one, on August 7th.

The News trumpets A2’s showing on the most recent city ranking: 59th place. The ranking, conducted by an association of home builders, purports to rate cities on housing affordability by calculating “the percentage of homes sold that would be considered affordable for a family who earned the median income for the local area … assuming the family can spend 28 percent of its gross income on housing, among other assumptions.”

Other assumptions — like the assumption that “housing” is synonymous with “owner-occupied housing.”

Even if you explicitly set out to compile an index of housing affordability that ignores those ne’er-do-well renters, this would still be some pretty flawed methodology. For one thing, it assumes that the desire to own a house rather than rent is constant across all regions by comparing the average area income of all residents, including those who rent, with house prices.

Economist Dean Baker writes at his excellent “Beat the Press” blog at The American Prospect:

Politicians routinely hawk homeownership as an end in itself and have pushed policies that are designed to maximize homeownership. (They have also been assisted in these efforts by private foundations that are committed to assisting moderate income families.) This has often meant promoting policies that provide large subsidies to homeowners, and implicitly neglecting renters.

This single-minded promotion of homeownership is now proving to have disastrous consequences for many moderate income families that bought homes at the peak of the bubble … This is what happens when sound policy is subjugated to political ideology. For many people, in many circumstances, homeownership is a good idea. But it is not everywhere and always better for people to own than rent.

AT&T generously provides pristine white surfaces for local first-graders or aspiring Golden Paintbrush Award winners to transform into community art, and all the Old West Side can do is complain about the alleged “monstrosities.”

Sure, it’s nice for employees to get a living wage and all, but is it really so important for young “temporary” workers — temporary workers whose “pretty good gig” controlling crowds and picking up trash at Top of the Park allows them to experience the thrill of seeing great family movies and interacting with Ann Arborites? Judy McGovern doesn’t think so. Maybe they should be paying the city for the privilege!