As the Ann Arbor mayoral race heats up, incumbent Christopher Taylor and challenger Yousef Rabhi faced off in a public forum attended by hundreds of local residents at the Ann Arbor District Library Wednesday evening. During the event — which was hosted by the League of Women Voters of Washtenaw County — each candidate responded to questions regarding housing supply, a potential city takeover of Ann Arbor’s energy grid and an ongoing union dispute with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Housing
The opening questions of the forum addressed creating more affordable housing, with both candidates expressing support for future developments.
After intense debate earlier this year, the Ann Arbor City Council passed the Comprehensive Land Use Plan, which aims to build more duplexes and triplexes to increase the city’s housing stock. Taylor said his administration has already successfully added affordable housing units.
“We are already creating affordable housing,” Taylor said. “(There were) 600 units of affordable housing in the first 200 years of our history. Over the next five years, we have built or packed in the pipeline 1,200 units of new permanent affordable housing. This is not fantasy — this is real.”
Rabhi said, if elected, affordable housing would increase greatly under his leadership. Rabhi criticized Taylor’s plan to repurpose the Kline’s lot for the construction of luxury condos, arguing the city could instead use the land to build affordable housing.
“We have seen a town that has a City Council and mayor that is looking to sell off the Kline’s Lot, a publicly-owned facility that could be used to build affordable housing, but instead is going to be used to build private luxury condos,” Rabhi said. “People are wondering why (they are) paying high taxes and not getting the services that (they are) paying for. It’s because the city is giving away tax dollars to developers, selling off public land (and) privatizing city services.”
Rabhi also discussed increasing housing affordability through the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, cooperative housing and the city’s Community Land Trust, a nonprofit providing less expensive housing to working-class residents. Responding to Rabhi’s criticism, Taylor claimed new private developments have decreased Ann Arbor’s rent prices.
“When we have an opportunity for housing — for market housing — I’m gonna vote yes, because market housing increases supply, and we have a supply problem in our nation and in our city,” Taylor said. “It’s supply and demand, and it’s real, and it’s already having effects: The rent in Ann Arbor is going down.”
Rabhi argued rent for many Ann Arbor residents’ hasn’t decreased. He believes the cost of living has displaced residents — especially who belong to minority communities.
“I have yet to meet somebody whose rent has actually gone down in this community,” Rabhi said. “We have seen displacement and gentrification as a result of some of the policies that have come out of this administration. We have lost not just homes for people of color, for communities that traditionally have been targeted by development, but also our small local businesses that are minority owned.”
Former Councilmember Kathy Griswold — a vocal critic of Taylor — told The Michigan Daily many people support Rabhi because they feel officials have not been responsive to resident complaints about displacement.
“I think that people were very disappointed and frustrated by the Comprehensive Land Use Plan,” Griswold said. “They didn’t feel that they were heard. They felt like it was pre-determined based on who was appointed initially, and I believe that has increased the turnout, and more people are engaged in local politics.”
City Takeover of the Electrical Grid
Ann Arbor for Public Power is currently drafting a proposal to purchase the city’s electrical grid from DTE Energy to create a publicly owned utility, and is collecting signatures to put the matter to a vote in November. Rabhi said he believes a shift to a municipalized power grid is necessary because DTE prioritizes profits over customers and uses campaign contributions to influence politicians.
“DTE spends a lot, and by a lot, I mean hundreds of millions of your rate-payer money to influence our legislators and to buy lawmakers,” Rabhi said. “DTE spent money on lobbyists, they spent money on dark money accounts … I came to the conclusion that there is only one way to achieve 100% renewable energy, to achieve reliable energy, to achieve cheaper energy, and that way is municipalizing our power grid here in the city of Ann Arbor.”
Rabhi also expressed support for the Ann Arbor Sustainable Energy Utility initiative, which will provide residents with an option to supplement DTE’s electricity with renewable energy. The program is being piloted through solar panel installations in the Bryant neighborhood.
Taylor praised the SEU, but said he does not support municipalizing Ann Arbor’s power grid because it would increase costs for both the city and taxpayers.
“We have to buy DTE’s assets in their janky condition — hundreds of millions of dollars,” Taylor said. “We need to buy DTE’s perpetual profits interest that they have in this city as a result of state law — hundreds of millions of dollars. We need to fight DTE in court — decade plus, tens of millions of dollars — your dollars. We don’t have it. It’s not realistic.”
AFSCME Union Contract
The AFSCME Local 369 — a union of city employees — has been working without a contract since the start of 2026, and is engaged in an ongoing dispute with the city over cost-of-living increases. Taylor said the city reached out to AFSCME over a year ago to begin negotiations, but claimed the union’s requests were unrealistic.
“The AFSCME business agent communicated to us … that completing this negotiation by the end of the year was not his priority,” Taylor said. “AFSCME, for months, insisted on a cost-of-living wage (increase) of 12% in the first year, 12% in the second year, 12% in the third year, with additional economic benefits layered on top of that. … That’s just not sustainable.”
Rabhi expressed support for the union — which has endorsed his mayoral candidacy — and its contract demands, citing his participation in a recent City Council meeting where AFSCME members protested a 0% wage increase in 2025.
“Our workers deserve a fair contract because they’re the ones doing the actual work of running this community,” Rabhi said. “When I was on the picket line with them before the last City Council meeting, I interacted with folks that work at our water department that make sure that the water that comes out of our tap is not contaminated. I want those people to be well-compensated and well-paid and to get a fair contract.”
However, Taylor said he feels those ideas are easier said than done.
“Serving as mayor is pretty different than walking a picket line,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty different than attending a rally and holding your fist in the air and shaking at the clouds and talking about what’s wrong in the world. It’s about actually getting things done.”
Data Centers
Over the last year, Washtenaw County has become home to an increasing number of current and potential data center sites. In Saline, Oracle and OpenAI are jointly constructing a data center to run their upcoming artificial intelligence project, Stargate. In Ypsilanti Township, the University and Los Alamos National Laboratory plan to build a data center which will be used, in part, for nuclear weapons research.
Though no data centers are currently being developed in Ann Arbor, Rabhi told the audience he was “absolutely” opposed to data centers, and pledged to propose a moratorium on their development if elected. He also vowed to support anti-data center efforts in Saline and Ypsilanti, arguing developments in neighboring communities also negatively impact Ann Arbor residents.
“The Saline data center — one of the largest data centers in the entire country — needs to be powered somehow,” Rabhi said. “Guess who just proposed to build one of the largest natural gas power plants in the entire state? Consumers Energy in Lima Township. Guess who’s going to be breathing that air? All of us. That’s why we need to show up in Saline to make sure that they’re not getting screwed, because them getting screwed means we’re getting screwed.”
While Taylor said he believes communities have the right to reject data centers, he did not pledge to support a moratorium, arguing the city is naturally unappealing to data center developers because of high land costs.
“Communities have a right to decide for themselves,” Taylor said. “Here in the city of Ann Arbor, it is not going to be an issue. We are not going to have data centers. It is a scare tactic. In the city of Ann Arbor, we don’t have a lot of land. The land that we have is valuable. It is valuable because we have so much of a need for housing.”
Rabhi disagreed with this perspective, arguing developers could construct smaller-scale data centers within city limits. A similar urban data center development was planned for downtown Lansing earlier this year, though it was not ultimately constructed.
“A lot of these hyperscale data center companies are pivoting, because they’re seeing the resistance in the community for hyperscale data centers,” Rabhi said. “They’re trying to go smaller to infiltrate into more urban areas. They’re coming for Ann Arbor to put data centers in our community, and we need to prepare for that.”
The Democratic primary for Ann Arbor’s mayoral election will take place Aug. 4.
Daily News Editors Dominic Apap and Glenn Hedin can be reached at dapap@umich.edu and heglenn@umich.edu.
