Daniel Adams

Exclusive: Complaint filed against Ann Arbor's Library Green Conservancy for Michigan Campaign Finance Act violation A screenshot of the complaint filed against the Library Green Conservancy  Andrew Robbins, a researcher at  U of M, has filed a complaint ...

The Library Green Conservancy, a 501(c)3 organization, spent $59,000 advocating against Proposals A and B.
www.damnarbor.com/2025/07/excl...
👀 #A2Council

When anyone points this fact out to them, they wail that this is a “personal attack.”

Yes! Of course it is. But being dispositionally unsuited to leadership and coalition building is also relevant to their organization’s near total failure to accomplish its objectives

And—top it off—their entire leadership team seems to have no idea how to get along with, let alone actually persuade, the people who didn’t support what they were trying to do but whose support would be crucial to actually getting it done.

There is no way to consume any amount of their work product and come away with the impression that they were either competent to perform or serious about accomplishing any task outside of blocking the Core Spaces project.

Library Green Conservancy’s president, lawyer, and treasurer are spending the final days of the campaign that it will decide its organization’s future by bickering with random people on Nextdoor.

#a2council

La vérité blesse.

Today's reminder that Library Green is an unserious organization run by unserious people. Prop A/B stand on their own merits, but anyone on the fence ought to shudder at the thought of giving LG another 5-10 years to cosplay fundraising and park planning. #a2council

Whoa

For a group that’s been claiming a grassroots mandate for their parking lot preservation initiative, that the people are positively clamoring to plow millions in taxpayer dollars into this project, pulling in six total individual donors is… not a strong showing.

Cracking open the Vote No on Proposals A and B campaign finance reports. #a2council

In 2018, we promised voters we would fund a park on the library lot without taxpayer dollars. Instead, we spent our 501c3's money on mailers opposing proposals that'd fund the park for free. Here's why it's everyone else's fault that the parking lot has remained desolate and uninviting. #a2council

“We didn’t fool most people because only some people heard our lies.”

#a2council

A parking lot with a large cement planter full of plants that are gone by, are invasive, or have died. In front of it is a dead tree.

Just saw all the cool events that @aadl.org has scheduled (in addition to the Summer Game!) and compared that to what the Center of the City/Commons group has going on. Seems as if they can’t even keep a planter looking good. Vote yes on A & B, for crying out loud. This is embarassing. #A2Council

In your defense: Eric Lipson’s brain is pretzely enough to do a full 180 on any issue. That’s because it’s an actual auntie annie’s pretzel from the mall.

We must strap this person to a polygraph:
- have you ever decadomed
- have you picnicked on a shadeless concrete slab
- do you support the love economy yes or no
- do you hate housing so much that you’re willing to fist fight a public library

The lawyer for Save Our Heritage Parking Lot has his conspiracy theory to respond to this piece already in the can: Anyone claiming to have soured on parking-lot preservation is a fake or a plant, unless parking-lot preservation bonafides are authenticated with contemporaneous evidence. #a2council

When you deny, over and over, that X thing will require a millage or a serious general fund outlay, and promise over and over that “private philanthropy” will pick up the slack, I think it’s reasonable for people to infer that you’re going to raise more than ~150k over seven years.

There’s a slipperiness to both the original LGC position and their recent denials that assumes credulity bordering on amnesia among the A2 electorate.

What are they denying? That they made promises that they would raise “serious money” to build the park? Their treasurer is on video saying it!

“No one with any authority to speak for the Library Green Conservancy or the Ballot Committee ever made such a promise.”

No one except two officers and a board member, on multiple occasions, and in ways obviously calculated to create the impression that the park would not burden taxpayers.

YouTube video by Ann Arbor District Library Debate on Proposal A—the “Library Lot"

Frank Wilhelme has been an LGC officer since at least 2019.

His comments during the 2018 debate were, uh, fairly unequivocal on the topic of LGC’s fundraising intentions.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=wxjq...

Alan Haber, in 2018, was a named LGC board member.

Here’s Al boasting about the groups he had lined up to contribute to the project if the DDA balked.

This is how Will Hathaway explained the slide, in his capacity as an officer of Library Green Conservancy.

“We” expect to “raise funds” are reasonably specific words with reasonably precise meanings.

“No one with any authority to speak for the Library Green Conservancy or the Ballot Committee ever made such a promise.”

Will Hathaway was LGC’s secretary, treasurer, and public spokesperson in 2018. This is the slide he presented to the public on who would pay for the park. #a2council

“I’m not even sure how big of a check you need to write to me, but oh wow is it big.”

Black-belt level persuasion, it was not.

One of Library Green's founding members, one of the two originators of the concept, and LG's acting president for substantially all of the time period in which they were supposed to be raising "serious money" suddenly gets the boot.

Seems relevant to the question of why LGC wasn't raising money.

And if Mlive is going to finally ask some questions of Library Green, instead of just credulously reprinting the things they're making up to preserve their parking lot, I have some other suggestions.

Like why they quietly booted Alan Haber off their board of directors around 2023ish. #a2council

If donors needed it in writing, they had the 2019 council resolution, which committed the City and DDA--in writing--to City "implement[ing] the Center of the City Charter Amendment."

They had this in their back pocket in 2019 and still couldn't raise money.

a2gov.legistar.com/LegislationD...

I mean, I guess Frank Wilhelme does tell Tom Crawford that he views Library Green's relationship with the city as a "public/private partnership," which, given that he's saying it here, seems to suggest that he was comfortable enough to say it to potential donors.

Does anyone know? Maybe before running another piece claiming that the city failed to "follo[w] through" on the project, @mlive.com could ask a question or two of the "charitable" org that is currently burning up its donated money to campaign against the public library system.

When did LGC first deploy the City Wouldn't Sign Our MOU Chewbacca Defense?

Still searching, but here's a 2021 clip of at least two LGC board members begging the city administrator for money in the upcoming city budget while *never once* mentioning a MOU. #a2council

youtu.be/X9NoFYUcvxY?...