ANN ARBOR, MI - Voters in Ann Arbor's 4th Ward must decide who's going to represent them on City Council for the next four years, and there are two choices on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Elizabeth Nelson, a Democrat who defeated incumbent Graydon Krapohl in the August primary, is now up against independent Joe Hood, a former Republican precinct delegate.

It's one of only two contested Ann Arbor council races on the November ballot, the other being the matchup between Jeff Hayner and Ryan Hughes in the 1st Ward.

Hood, an IT director for an architecture firm, says fixing the "deplorable condition" of city streets is his top priority.

He's not satisfied with the usual excuses about lack of state funding and Michigan winters being tough.

"I found there are ways of doing permanent road repairs in the dead of winter," he said at a recent candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters in Ann Arbor.

"One of my first items on my agenda when I'm on council is to work together with elected officials of other cities in southeastern Michigan to get demonstrations of these newer technologies, to work within the confines of existing budgets to do more."

Nelson, a substitute teacher, said she wants to give a stronger voice to residents when it comes to city planning, spending decisions and consideration of new developments.

She said she rode her bicycle around the 4th Ward this summer, listening to concerns from residents, and they want the city to focus on providing basic services before funding other things.

Since winning the primary, Nelson said she's been meeting with elected officials and other community leaders to better understand how she could effectively represent the ward.

"When I decided to run for this office, I raised concerns about how divisions and factions on council were getting in the way of constructive discussion," she said. "I believe our leaders should work together to find common ground and compromise."

Nelson said she has met with Mayor Christopher Taylor and every incumbent and soon-to-be-elected council member who will serve starting in November, and she's proud to say both Taylor and Council Member Jack Eaton, Taylor's political opponent in the recent mayoral race, have endorsed her campaign.

Both candidates believe their professional backgrounds and training would position them well for service in office.

"As the director of IT for a national architecture firm, I spend my days responding as quickly as I can to a myriad of issues that are critical for keeping people working and the business running smoothly," Hood said, vowing to apply his analytical skills to city issues.

Nelson believes the fact that she holds a law degree puts her in a better position to understand policy issues.

"In the next four years, our city will tackle a number of important issues with significant legal context," she said, vowing to work for progressive and equitable city policies that consider the needs of a diverse community and protect the environment.

Library Lot

The future of the city-owned Library Lot, which the city has agreed to sell to Chicago developer Core Spaces for $10 million to allow a 17-story high-rise and plaza to be built, is one of the most debated issues in the city and the subject of a proposal on the Nov. 6 ballot that calls for designating the lot as a city park and civic commons.

When considering the tens of millions of dollars the city already put into building an underground parking garage beneath the Library Lot, the parking lot next to the library along Fifth Avenue, and the fact that plans are now in the works for another expansion of the parking system as the city plans to lease hundreds of parking spaces to Core Spaces, Hood said he doesn't think the numbers add up.

"It's Enron accounting," he said. "Whatever way we go with the vote on that, whether it becomes a park or it becomes a 17-story building, I'm in favor of what the public decides, but there are some strange numbers going around for how this works."

Nelson said she's glad the issue is going to voters and it shows residents do care about their urban landscape and they want to talk about the lasting impact of the city's choices.

"There is clearly a huge difference between receiving revenue and creating a publicly owned space," she said. "My position is that I think it was probably a mistake from the beginning to try to wring the maximum amount of money out of this property, because the controversy that we're seeing now is probably related to the size and scale of the project, which is not the fault of Core Spaces."

Nelson said she urges everyone voting in November to educate themselves on the issue.

"It is a complicated choice," she said.

$86M new train station

Whether the city should continue moving forward with plans for a roughly $86 million new Amtrak train station is another issue on which the two candidates shared their views.

Nelson notes the city still doesn't have federal approval of its environmental assessment identifying Fuller Park as the preferred site for a new station to replace the Depot Street station.

She also notes the Federal Railroad Administration has required the city to give more consideration to different options, and she believes a proposed mixed-use redevelopment of the DTE Energy property next to the existing station makes the Depot Street location look a lot more interesting in terms of what may be possible there.

"I have concerns about converting parkland ... to a use like a train station," she said of using part of Fuller Park. "I know others have those concerns and ... I share the concerns that the feds offered that we didn't properly consider alternatives."

If the city had taken advantage of the opportunity to partner with DTE, she said, the city may be in a better position for federal funding.

"As an added note, a project like this in the current political climate is probably not as likely to move forward," she said, expressing doubts that a new train station will happen anytime soon.

The City Council recently agreed to spend another $110,000 to continue working through the planning phases.

In the coming months, the city expects to reach the $3 million mark in terms of the amount spent on train station studies and plans, about half of which is local money and half federal grant funds.

Rather than building in Fuller Park, Hood said he thinks the current Amtrak station could be expanded.

"If you're building a train station, and that's happened everywhere around the world, it becomes the anchor for development," he said. "So, if you're building a train station in the park and it becomes the anchor for development, where's the development going?"

Hood said it seems federal money for a project "has left the station" and there's not much more to say about it.

Affordable housing

The candidates have some different ideas about the growing issue of affordability in Ann Arbor. When the question came up at the forum, Hood raised concerns about taxes.

"Affordable housing means different things to different people," he said. "If you're entering your golden years, you're retiring, you're not having the same level of money anymore, but your real estate taxes are still going up, that's an affordability issue for a lot of folks."

As far as where new affordable housing could be built in the 4th Ward, Hood said, "There's not a lot there."

He suggested greater housing density downtown would allow for more walkability than other parts of the 4th Ward.

He also said there may be opportunities for affordable housing on township island properties using low-income housing tax credits, but he doesn't think the idea of adding accessory dwelling units to existing homes works well in 4th Ward neighborhoods.

Nelson said she has had good conversations with the city's Housing Commission director about opportunities to create more affordable housing across the city. She's concerned a lot of the housing being built now is meeting only the high-end of the income bracket.

"It is a problem how segregated our city is," she said. "We need to be looking in all of the neighborhoods. There should be opportunities for affordable housing downtown, in Burns Park, in other neighborhoods. This is an asset to our city that our children can go to public schools and attend with a range of families from different socioeconomic levels."

She noted she lives near a lower-density affordable housing development on Pauline Boulevard that she thinks fits nicely into the neighborhood, but she has concerns about other denser developments.

She said someone suggested the property around the Salvation Army might be a good place for some denser housing.

South State Street corridor

Another issue in the 4th Ward is the future vision for the South State Street corridor, a major gateway into the city.

Nelson said she knows there are some conversations about making it more pedestrian-friendly and she supports more public discussion about options for improving the corridor.

She suggested there may be opportunities for residential development along the corridor so there's more of a mix of uses, and she thinks there are traffic issues that could be addressed.

Hood said having a good gateway into the city would be nice but he thinks that's a far-off vision.

"We have a ways to go before we can get there," he said. "The complaints I hear from people in the ward are not the things we're going to do but the things we haven't done.

"So, I'm going to say that we need to fix the roads first before we even get to thinking about doing that."

Other issues

Asked what else they consider a priority, Nelson brought up the issue of stormwater management, while Hood talked about how the city is being managed and again brought up roads.

"I think a big issue for Ward 4 is stormwater runoff," Nelson said. "I've talked to a number of residents who are really, really concerned about flooding issues, and I think that underground infrastructure is every bit as important as street surface infrastructure."

Nelson said she wants to aggressively look at plans to address neighborhood flooding and reducing pollution washed into the Huron River by slowing the flow of stormwater.

"Additionally, I'm interested in increasing the connection between our city decisions and residents," she said.

Hood briefly mentioned the rebate the city is getting from a new mental health and public safety tax, suggesting it might be better spent hiring more social workers who can work with police, rather than spending it on efforts to try to address climate change.

In an interview earlier this year, Hood described himself as a "climate skeptic," but he said he tries to be green anyway.

Hood briefly touched on the fact that the city is creating a new police oversight commission. He said there were a lot of smart people on the city's advisory task force on police oversight, but he thinks what they're trying to do is reinvent government.

"They're trying to basically do what we should already be doing with our elected government to begin with, and we're finding that same issue in -- I hate to harp on it -- the roads," he said.

Questioning recent changes to an intersection that he thinks aren't working out well, he argued city government in Ann Arbor is not performing the way it should.

"We have a weak-mayor format with a city manager," he said. "The city manager basically runs the day-to-day business at the city. If something happens, it's not answered by the citizens, then the City Council's supposed to deal with the city manager, and that hasn't happened, so we're not running on all eight cylinders."

On the issue of police oversight, Nelson states on her campaign website that she hopes residents "will eventually find a safe space to discuss and address issues of over-policing, harassment, implicit bias, and other challenges. This commission is an investment toward a more positive community climate."

When Nelson unseated Krapohl in the August primary, the vote count was 3,200 to 2,131, giving her nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Hood was elected to serve as a Republican precinct delegate from 2012 to 2014. He decided earlier this year to run for City Council as a Democrat, competing against Krapohl and sharing the stage with him at a candidate forum in April before dropping out of the race.

Nelson then filed to run against Krapohl in the primary, and Hood decided to run as an independent in November.

More info

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6.

MLive has partnered with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Michigan to provide information to voters about the issues being decided in the November 2018 election. Check out the League of Women Voters Education Fund voter guide at Vote411.org to learn more about candidates and proposals on the ballot.

All responses in the voter guide were submitted directly by the candidates and have not been edited by the League of Women Voters, except for necessary cut if a reply exceeded character limitations. Spelling and grammar were not corrected. Publication of candidate statements and opinions is solely in the interest of public service and should not be considered as an endorsement. The league never supports or opposes any candidates or political parties.