When Almunthir Elhady moved with his family from the eastern part of Dearborn to the western part, he noticed how much better the infrastructure and city services were in the wealthier part of the city.
“The first year, we got our roads fixed,” Elhady said, recalling what he experienced after moving several years ago. “In the east end, we never had our roads fixed. Our roads were awful. … You go across Southfield (road) and Dearborn on one side looks like Canton or Bloomfield, and the other side is Inkster. What happened? It’s still the same city, still the same people, but all the resources are being poured into one area. … It’s a tale of two cities.”
For that reason, Elhady and others are asking Dearborn officials to change how voters elect members of city council from its current at-large system of seven members elected in citywide voting to one where there would be nine council members who represent nine different parts of the city, geographical areas known as wards. Advocates for the changes say it will improve representation, democracy and diversity while those who favor the current system say wards are divisive and will hurt the city.
It’s an issue that has been hotly debated in other cities and townships across metro Detroit as some suburbs face growing pockets of poverty and increasing racial diversity often segregated by geography. In Warren, residents south of the I-696 highway, which generally has lower incomes and greater numbers of immigrants and minorities, complain they are underrepresented on its city council, which has switched in part to a wards system. Ann Arbor, Rochester Hills, Grand Rapids, and Detroit are some of the other cities that have wards, either for some or all of the council seats. Out of the Top 30 largest municipalities in Michigan by population, ten of them have a wards system, according to the political advocacy group Dearborn Wants Wards.
Under the wards system proposed last month by a Dearborn charter commissioner, Elizabeth Bailey, the highest vote-getter in each of the nine districts in Dearborn would represent that specific district. It would also apply to how voters elect the city’s nine charter commissioners, which are temporary positions elected every 12 years to tweak city laws.
The shape of the districts would be determined by a seven-member commission whose members would consist of three members of Dearborn’s election commission — made of up the city clerk, city corporation counsel and a private citizen — and four citizens who would be chosen randomly by the city clerk among applicants. City council candidates would have to live in the districts they seek to represent.
“This proposal would be beneficial to the city because council wards have been shown to contribute to effective, responsive, and representative local government,” Bailey told the Free Press. “Council wards would increase inclusion in our city by eliminating the divide between residents who feel connected to the political process and those who face barriers to participating in it.”
On Wednesday evening, the nine-member charter commission is expected to vote on Bailey’s proposal that advocates said will help reduce disparities rooted in a history of City Hall’s negligence of certain parts of the city, such as the south end. They emphasize this is an issue that affects several different parts of Dearborn, including its eastern part and even some pockets of the western part of the city that lack representation on council. Austin Ramos and some other members of a west end group who support having wards, the Southwestern Outer Drive Neighborhood Association, said a swimming pool and library were recently eliminated in their part of the city.
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Dearborn is a city of about 110,000 residents, the 7th largest municipality in Michigan, according to the 2020 census. About 45,500 of them, less than half, live in the west end. The city has a wide range of income levels, with high levels of poverty and industrial pollution in the south end and parts of the eastern area, with more expensive homes in the western part.
If the charter commission does vote Wednesday to approve changing elections to a wards system, it would not automatically lead to the changes. The wards proposal would then be added to a list of other proposed charter changes and go on the ballot for a special election in February 2024. Voters have to vote on the entire list of changes and can’t pick and choose which ones they prefer. Opponents of the wards worry the wards proposal could derail support in the February election for the charter changes overall.
If the charter commission rejects Wednesday the wards proposal, proponents say they will look at other ways to change the system, maybe through a separate ballot proposal or legal action with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Disparities in Dearborn
There are “inhumane disparities … that some residents and corners of our city experience daily due to the lack of representation on council and charter commission,” Mona Mawari, a Dearborn pharmacist and founder of Dearborn Wants Wards, told the nine-member charter commission at a public meeting last month.
“Some folks claim that wards are divisive, but … there’s nothing more divisive than exclusion. The at-large system is divisive. At-large elections are a recipe for voter apathy because one voter bloc in the entire city dictates who sits on council, school board, and charter commission seats. So when east, south and pockets of the west end voters come out time and time again to vote for their preferred candidates, and they never win, they end up giving up on voting altogether,” she said.
Mawari cited a report released in 2021 by the National Civic League that recommended that cities with 100,000 residents with diverse populations include a wards system in electing city council members. Other residents cited the June 2021 floods that damaged thousands of homes, most of them in the eastern and south end areas; they said lack of representation on the council led to their neighborhoods being ignored in flood prevention programs.
Out of Dearborn’s seven members of city council, all live in the west end except for Councilman Kamal Alsawafy, who is currently on military leave with the National Guard. And all of the nine members of the charter commission, elected in November 2021, live in the west end except for Commissioner Hussein Hachem. On the Dearborn School board, only two live outside the west end.
“It’s more democratic to have the ward system … because of how diverse the city is,” Elhady said. “People vote in their own interests, rightfully so. And they’re not aware of what other communities struggle with.”
Council President opposes wards
But other residents and officials disagree, saying the current system works and has produced diversity on the council, where four of the seven council members are of Arab descent. Dearborn is 47% Arab American, according to the census.
“I am not in support of it,” Dearborn Council President Mike Sareini told the Free Press about the proposed wards system. “I believe that we need to represent the entire city as a collective body, as it is only 24 (square) miles. We have a diverse council, with no reason to change.”
Gary Woronchak, a former state representative and former Wayne County Commission chairman who represented Dearborn, also strongly opposes the wards system.
“I disagree with what seems a basic premise of this issue: that council members elected at large are unable to equitably represent all residents,” Woronchak told the commission at a meeting in November, according to a copy of remarks he shared with the Free Press. “A council member’s current home address does not reflect other factors that qualify them to know and respect the needs of neighborhoods other than their own.”
Woronchak noted that several council members who live in the west end grew up in other parts of the city or still have family members there or attended school outside the western part of the city.
“My biggest concern with this proposal is that I believe it risks increasing division in Dearborn, pitting neighborhood against neighborhood, rather than having all council members weighing all issues against the needs and good of the entire city,” Woronchak said. “It is a serious departure from the notion of us being ‘One Dearborn,’ unified across cultural and geographic differences.”
A spokesman for Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, Bilal Baydoun, said Hammoud is not commenting on the debate.
Marwari and others with Dearborn Wants Wards support Hammoud and say he has worked to promote equity in the city. Hammoud brought back the city’s health department last year with an emphasis on reducing disparities. But they worry that the council and the city bureaucracy are still not responsive to areas of the city and so more permanent changes are needed. Moreover, if Dearborn later was to have another mayor, the commitment to equity may disappear, they said.
The chair of the charter commission, Hassan Abdallah, declined comment. Vice-chair Sharon Dulmage did not return emails seeking comment. Council President Pro Tem Leslie Herrick did not return a message seeking comment.
Debate over wards system
At the May 3rd charter meeting, Ann Arbor City Councilwoman Jen Eyer spoke about what she said were the benefits of having a wards system, noting that after Ann Arbor started to use it, the number of minorities and women on council increased instead of being controlled by elderly white men. There are currently no Arab American women among Dearborn’s citywide elected officials or school board members. Councilman Ken Paris challenged some of Eyer’s remarks and indicated he opposed including the wards proposal on the charter ballot.
Other residents at the meeting spoke in favor of Bailey’s proposal.”When council members live in an area that is impacted by an issue, they may know about the issue earlier … and be better prepared to propose solutions that will fit the needs of the nearby community,” Bailey said.
Debates over the wards system in the U.S. stretch back to the early 20th century, according to historians. Some argued that having an at-large system reduced City Hall corruption while others said attacks on the wards system were motivated by prejudice against ethnic immigrant groups. In Dearborn, the south end of the city is predominantly of Yemeni descent and Yemeni-Americans are the second largest group within the city’s large Arab American population, but they don’t have any members on the city council or charter commission. Advocates for the changes stress though that their proposal would help many areas of the city and different groups, not just Yemeni Americans.
In Detroit, the city switched a decade ago to a system of electing seven seats by wards and two at-large members. Warren also adopted a wards system about a decade ago, but there has been controversy over how the commission drew the districts, resulting in only one member of the council from south of I-696, reported the Macomb Daily.
The Dearborn Charter Commission meeting starts at 6 pm and can be viewed online on Facebook.
Contact Niraj Warikoo:nwarikoo@freepress.com or Twitter @nwarikoo
