A builders license is nothing more than a license to do business. By State of MI law, you need one to legally enter into a contract, not to actually build anything. Trade/Contractor licenses are the same. A State of MI license is required to get a permit, but not to do the actual work. Indeed many licensed contractors are proficient at their trade, but the license is only required for contracts and permits. Many licensed contractors do not work with the tools, but hire others to perform the actual work. A carpenter on the job is not required to hold any type of license, only their employer.

In fact, a “builders” license is not required to build a high rise building. At that level anyone can contract to build as long as the specific trades, including the structural work performed by a builder, are licensed and apply for their own permits and schedule required inspections. The design work must be done by a licensed architect or an engineer for that specific trade, but the developer/contractor is not required to be licensed, only their subcontractors.

The proficiency licenses that are actually meaningful are at the journey level. Trade unions are the only organizations that offer the traditional steps for tradespeople at apprentice, journey and master skill levels.

MI requires at least one person of journey level to be on the jobsite when electrical and plumbing work is being performed. This does not apply to builders or mechanical contractors.

How long was your apprenticeship? Did you attain journey level or Master in a trade?

I know dozens of folks with builders licenses and have met hundreds more. Some of them have never driven a nail or cut a board. They took the class at WCC or Henry Ford that guaranteed them to be able to pass the licensing exam. They have the gall to call themselves “builders”. The State of MI builders licensing is a sham that leads people to believe that the person they’re hiring actually knows something about building.

P.S. I had a builders license before I went to grad school, Mucho.

I think you should seek employment in the television pundit biz. Maybe you could call it “Softball with Dale Winling”

Your real calling is in political prognostication, not urban planning. You’re just as accurate and as irritating as Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity. You really know how to throw the big words and phrases around! No wonder you wrote an 11mb thesis. Wast of bandwidth if you ask me, (but then no one did)

My advice? Learn a trade!

In 1999, when I ran for city council in the 4th ward, the Ann Arbor News feared that I’d be the eighth vote in a Democratic “supermajority” (e.g. to override then-mayor Ingrid Sheldon’s veto of a living wage ordinance).

But, strategically, they didn’t write much about that. Nor did they slam me as an ex-chair of the Historic District Commission who would halt change. Rather, in print, they picked up on my density views, and portrayed as a pro-development extremist who wanted big buildings all over downtown. And sure enough, I lost by 79 votes.

Believe me, I know how you feel. I remember bitterly catastrophizing over the result of this or that city council primary in the past (not even counting my own). But Ann Arbor has a big council with short terms. It’s better to take the long view in politics as well as planning.

I would be willing to cut small businessman Anglin some slack if, for example, his skepticism about downtown development didn’t fit so beautifully into his own business interests. And if he weren’t endorsed by every major figure in the NIMBY lobby.

As for Briere, I believe she is for a kind of affordable housing — the pittance that assuages liberal guilt rather than the structural change along a broad continuum that provides for working class residents as well as the impoverished. But the overreaching Lower Town historic district proposal was a pretty transparent into her values regarding housing in Ann Arbor. Arguing that, in the near term, employing the quickest and most easily understood strategy to address affordable housing (and defending that position) is like arguing that the near term solution to beating a Midwestern heat wave is to leave one’s refrigerator open all day. If the prime near term goal is a cool kitchen and dining room, it’s absolutely right. On the other hand, if the goals are broad accessibility to cool places, mitigation of the effects of the sun and lower energy consumption, you’re going to have to do something about street trees, passive cooling, and better insulation and ventilation. Why would we even suggest standing in front of the fridge?

Anyway, I don’t think of the current council as having pro-development and anti-development caucuses. I think of them as all pretty skeptical (or gunshy), with Greden, Easthope and maybe Kunselman being the most willing to address the significant development problems in the city. Don’t get me started on the NIMBY dog whistle of “sensible development” and “unique character.”

At the risk of being entirely repetitive, I’d say it’s high time for Todd Leopold to get into city politics.

First of all, Anglin’s win was no surprise, given that he hugely outworked, outraised, and outspent Woods. In a transient community like Ann Arbor, city council incumbency has little “strength”, and being noncontroversial is not necessarily an asset. You win by campaigning, as Greden, Briere, and Anglin did, and as Easthope did in last year’s primary.

If the council consists of two factions, yesterday’s result represents only a one-seat shift; this year’s pro-development majority will still be the majority next year.

Moreover, I wouldn’t write off Sabra Briere’s commitment to affordable housing, even if she makes the argument that building upscale condos is not the way to achieve it. Frankly, if the prime goal is near-term affordable housing, she’s absolutely right.

Finally, there is really no way under present political circumstances that the Republican Party will resurge in this town. The notion of idiosyncratic local versions of national political parties is quaintly archaic now, like Mom-and-Pop gas stations. National politics has sharpened the Democratic and Republican party brands, and by those standards, only a small minority in Ann Arbor are willing to identify with the Republican Party.

Of course, the absence of Republican candidates or Republican organization doesn’t mean that conservative voters are disempowered. They have simply switched over to voting in the Democratic primary, at least in the odd-year, council-only elections. Presumably they are willing to support, at least, ex-Republicans like Higgins and Rapundalo. As I wrote in AAIO comments, I expect the Ann Arbor News coverage and endorsements were crafted to guide them in a certain direction.

After voting yesterday in the Fifth Ward, I was chatting with one of the poll worker ladies about the relative merits of moving to non-partisan elections for Council, on the theory that we’d get broader participation, broader discussion, etc., if the decision were made in the fall instead of in one of the party’s primaries.

She said she’d be for it. But then she observed that the Council elections had been moved from a spring-time cycle in the past to their current configuration–largely to accommodate students [I'm not sure exactly what the historical facts are there.] And then went on to inveigh against students voting in ‘our elections’. After all, she said, they register merely to get access to the presidential level franchise, which is all well and good, but that shouldn’t mean that they should get to vote to raise our taxes–as they don’t pay taxes. The counter that students who paid rent to a landlord did so at a level that included an amount sufficient for a landlord to pay taxes on the property was met with the bald fact: it’s the landlord who pays the taxes.

On the idea that even folks who had a stake in a community by living here for even a ‘short’ while, and being involved in that community’s life and concerns for that time, certainly deserved the franchise, she was skeptical that even 20% of students could be looped into active participation in the community that would allow them to vote in an informed way. [20% was the number I floated as a fraction that might become active and informed if non-student, longer-term residents made an effort to loop students into the 'city', while acknowledging that when I was in college I definitely would have been in the other 80%.] I did not share with her the anecdote of a longtime Third Ward homeowner I was socializing with, who one day before the election conceded that she was uncertain which of the two chicks in her ward to vote for, /lay/ or LuAnne. [Leigh, the first one, is male.]

The poll worker lady was generally pleasant, sincere, and quite cheery, concluding our little chat with, “But Ann Arbor _is_ really wonderful.” There is some kind of joke to be made here about whether you see the glass as half-empty or as completely wonder-ful. I’ll settle for a glass of anything I can drink right now, because it’s freakin’ hot today.

Anyway, if she works the same precinct the next half-dozen elections, I figure I might be able to win that lady over to the idea that democracy really means everybody. It’d be nice though, if enough people were voting that there wasn’t time for her to have a 10-minute chat with me.

As for a resurgence of the local Republican party though, no. There can be healthy intraparty competition. A resurgence in a party where its considered ok to be a regent at a national research university while chairing the gubernatorial campaign of a guy advocating “intelligent design”? Those aren’t voices missing from the dialogue.