Ypsi Ballot Initiative Group or YpsiBIG plans to amend the Ypsilanti City Charter to increase city tenant rights, scrap the city’s partisan voting system, and give the general public power over the police budget by collecting signatures on three separate ballot petitions.
“We want to empower city residents to engage in politics outside of the electoral realm,” Eastern Michigan graduate student and navigation coach for EMU’s Returning Citizens Americorps Program, Colton Ray said.
On-campus students at Eastern can register to vote in the City of Ypsilanti for the upcoming election, and those who are currently registered to vote at their campus address can sign the petitions, according to Ray.
The police budget ballot initiative would require that the general public vote on any changes to the Ypsilanti Police Department budget during a regular November election.
“There has been talk for years in the city about forming an unarmed, non-police, crisis response team,” Ray said.
There have been vacancies within the city’s police department, according to Ray.
“To my understanding, despite these vacancies existing, the funding is still allocated to the police department,” Ray said. “If that funding could go towards the crisis response team, that would really shift how residents experience and respond to safety concerns.”
“This is an amazing opportunity to see what happens when you push for direct democracy in our city,” University of Michigan Dearborn student and Eastern Michigan alumni, Ravyn Kalfayan said. “If you trust people and their intentions and want the people of Ypsilanti to have a voice, what’s the problem?”
The non-partisan local election ballot initiative aims to eliminate partisan voting for mayor and city council positions. This means that straight-ticket voting would not apply to those seats.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, straight-ticket voting is when voters make one mark or selection on the ballot to vote for every candidate of that party for each partisan office on the ballot.
“That has unintentionally made it to where a lot of conservatives will run for city council as a democrat,” Kalfayan said. “You get stuck with this block on your city council who is more or less acting as a right-leaning centrist.”
This initiative would also eliminate city council and mayor primary elections.
“It’s a good opportunity to get a more progressive city government in Ypsi,” Kalfayan said.
The tenant’s rights ballot initiative advocates for a ban on rental application fees, a requirement for landlords to follow a Right of First Refusal law, and requiring landlords to register their Ypsilanti properties on an accessible online database.
“The ban on rental application fees not only resonates with me, but also the people we’ve been talking with,” Ray said.
Ray is currently a renter and does not see himself owning a home anytime soon, he said.
“A lot of people will apply to several different places and get charged a $50, $100, or $200 application fee and get denied,” Ray said. “People are getting charged hundreds of dollars to apply for a basic need like housing.”
Ray also hopes that the Right of First Refusal law will empower more tenants to purchase homes in Ypsilanti, he said.
It would be the city council’s job to apply substantial financial penalties to landlords who don’t comply with this amendment, according to YpsiBIG.
“Getting charged late fees or getting harassed by police – these are political things that elected leaders either don’t want to or care about getting seriously addressed,” Ray said.
The group must collect 900 signatures on each ballot petition by July 22.
“We’re doing traditional-style door-to-door canvassing, going to citywide events like Juneteenth or Ypsi Pride, and there are people gathering signatures alongside Amber Fellows, who is running for city council in ward three,” Kalfayan said. “We have similar platform and values to her.”
YpsiBIG holds open-invite meetings every Sunday from 1-4 p.m. at Vertex Coffee until the end of July. Those interested can attend to learn more about how to help join the canvassing effort and sign petitions if they are a Ypsilanti resident.
“Lately, meetings have been mostly strategizing,” Ray said. “Where have we already canvassed, where we need to go, and double-checking the logistics of everything.”
The group is over halfway to reaching their goal of 900 signatures.
“We try to overshoot past 900 because there are a lot of little things that can invalidate the signatures,” Ray said.
The specifics of the city limit and borders can get in the way of signatures as well, Kalfayan said.
Signatures from residents of Ypsilanti Township are not valid for the petitions, according to Kalfayan.
“I think we’re all learning the intricacies of local government through this as well,” Kalfayan said.
If the group receives 900 signatures, the petition goes to the city council before it is placed on the ballot in November.
“We do anticipate some kind of legal challenge just because our initiatives are kind of on the radical side,” Kalfayan said.
The group has been preparing for this scenario with pro-bono lawyers, according to Kalfayan.
“If we don’t meet that goal, we definitely don’t plan on letting it discourage us,” Ray said.
The group will continue to work and prepare for the next election in 2024 even if the signature goal is not reached, according to Ray and Kalfayan.
“Even if we can’t get anything on the ballot, we would also be very determined to try again and learn from our mistakes,” Kalfayan said.
City Council member Desiraé Simmons, Washtenaw County Commissioner candidate Kat Layton, and City Council candidate Amber Fellows endorse all three ballot initiatives, and City Council candidate Me'Chelle King endorses the tenant rights and police budget initiatives, according to Kalfayan and Ray.
The group is learning from previous similar efforts by other groups put forth in 2020.
“We’ve been trying to the best of our ability to get legal advice,” Ray said. “Myself and a couple of others in the group have gone through hours of city ordinances to craft good language for these initiatives."
"The group has learned a lot of lessons since its start," Kalfayan said. “We’ve gotten through it, and it will be really useful for the people that come after us or even ourselves in the next years."
Kalfayan hopes these initiatives will open doors within grassroots organizations.
