Ann Arbor City Council - Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor has a Council-Manager government structure.

Meetings

The council traditionally meets the first and third Mondays of the month, at 7pm, on the second floor of City Hall. The meeting opens with reserved public comment; speakers must call the City Clerk's office during business hours on Monday to reserve one of these three-minute spaces, but can speak about any issue. Forty-five minutes are allocated for public comment at the beginning of the meeting, with any overflow taking place at the end of the meeting. Any ordinance change (including rezonings and site plans) receives its own public hearing, allowing anyone to speak for three minutes on the proposal.

Council meeting agendas are typically posted to Legistar the week before the meeting, including PDF versions of all items on the agenda. Meetings are shown live on CTN Channel 16 and streamed on YouTube.

Several of the local news media cover City Council meetings. Follow the #a2council hashtag on Bluesky for real time coverage.

The city charter gives council members and the mayor each a vote in decisions, for a total of 11 votes. Most decisions are by majority. Some may require a supermajority of 8; for example: "No office may be created or abolished, nor any street, alley, or public ground vacated, nor private property taken for public use, unless by a concurring vote of at least eight members of the Council." The mayor also has a veto on most decisions which may be overridden by an 8-vote supermajority.

Elections

Elections are held in even years. Ann Arbor has five wards, each represented by two Council members. Council members are elected to four-year terms, with one seat up for election every two years in each ward. The mayoral election is held on non-presidential years.

While historically more diverse, the Democratic party now dominated elections. Because of this, the August Democratic primary is now seen as the most important race for council, a fact that the New West Side and other student advocates decry as being unfair to students, who are often out of town or at temporary addresses over the summer. Some proposals intended to address this fact, such as moving the primary to November and the general election to February, seem difficult or impossible under current Michigan election law; other proposals, such as using Instant Runoff Voting for city elections, are opposed by the local Democrats and have had trouble receiving enough support to reach the ballot.

With single-party rule, factions have emerged within the local Democratic party; the conservative faction, which opposes densification and hopes to preserve the status quo, and the progressive faction, which supports increased densification and increased transportation options for people not using cars. The progressive faction has held a majority since 2020, and has held every seat since 2022.