Tax Imbalance
A new U-M study highlights inequity in metropolitan tax bases. How does Ann Arbor stack up?
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Government
A2Zero, Six Years In
“The system is the problem,” says Missy Stults, director of the Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI), which is why A2Zero focuses on institutionalizing change. Unwinding entrenched policies that have shaped development patterns and limited community choices for decades takes time—so why did A2Zero set a ten-year timeline? Stults insists that the plan’s ambitious pacing was necessary to maintain a sense of urgency about climate impacts.
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When Home Isn’t There
A recent report by the Washtenaw County Continuum of Care (CoC), a major player working to coordinate local efforts to end homelessness, paints an urgent picture: as of December 2025, at least 842 people in the county are experiencing homelessness—a 42 percent increase since 2024.
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Menopause Matters
Menopause and the menopause transition “remains one of the most overlooked and underserved areas in medicine,” according to the Menopause Society, a nonprofit focused on educating health care professionals.
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Arbor South Moves Ahead
He was referencing Arbor South, a $588 million plan to build more than 1,000 apartments and condos, as well as a hotel, services, and public spaces, on the parking lots around the 777 Building on Eisenhower Pkwy. (“The Litmus Test,” June 2024). Proposed by Ann Arbor’s Oxford Companies and Ohio developer Crawford Hoying, it was the first response to council’s rezoning of the area for high-density development, and councilmembers had been weighing whether to support it financially for almost a year.
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Weathering ICE
“You see vehicles that look suspicious with dark windows and [when] you look inside you see [people] in bullet-proof vests and you know, it’s them: its ICE,” says a community advocate who wishes to remain anonymous. “It’s happening in our lovely county. It’s here.”
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Something Blue
In October, the city began accepting applications from property owners for the Bluebelt program, a new effort designed to safeguard the sourcewater that feeds Ann Arbor’s drinking water system.
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Second Chances
After forty-three years, eleven months, and twenty-three days, Billy Cole was released from prison. It was 2019 and he found himself scrambling, trying to find his footing. He took on factory work, delivery work, anything he could find to bring in money and avoid returning to prison.
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Rode To Hell
It was a bright autumn morning for the more than 100,000 people driving to the Big House for the University of Michigan’s October 4 homecoming game against Wisconsin. Some sixteen miles west, about 250 others gathered at Chelsea Community Fairgrounds for a very different athletic contest: the annual Rode To Hell gravel bike race.
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Slippery Sidewalks
With the recent snowfall and cold weather, it should come as no surprise that A2 Fix It, Ann Arbor’s online system for reporting community issues—from potholes to broken streetlights to missed trash collections—has been inundated with complaints about ice-clad sidewalks. What is surprising is that some of these uncleared sidewalks are maintained by the city.
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Growing Pains
Barbara Gamm watched, worried, as nine trees fell in Scheffler Park near the construction site for Fire Station 4, touted as the city’s first net-zero facility.
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Squeezed Out
The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation 2025 Washtenaw County Housing Study revealed what Ann Arbor’s working class has long known: if you make less than $50,000, you can’t afford to live here.
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HERD Mentality
“I’m so glad you asked about HERD,” Ann Arbor’s Home Energy Rating Disclosure Ordinance, says Julie Roth, energy manager for the city’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations. “It’s safe to say that Ann Arbor has one of the most robust residential consumer protection programs in the country.”
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Thinking Bigger
The Downtown Development Authority’s new development plan includes up to $21 million for improvements to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. This may come as a surprise, since in 2017, a $1.5 million plan to build a year-round pavilion on a vacant lot facing Fourth Ave. was shelved because of cost.
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New Millage
On November 4, Ann Arbor voters approved the Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s (WISD) proposed millage, levying 1 mill annually for student career-technical education (CTE). The measure passed at just over 54 percent—about 36,000 ballots cast in favor.
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Vision Zero In Hindsight
In June 2021, city council adopted its Moving Together Toward Vision Zero comprehensive transportation plan, which called for the elimination of traffic fatalities and serious injuries by the end of 2025. Three months earlier, city staff announced a slightly less ambitious target: the number of fatalities and serious injuries caused by car crashes would fall below five per year. The two goals share one important commonality: failure.
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Last Call on CLUP
It’s been in the works for more than two years, and controversial since the first draft was released last spring.
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Fixing Barton Dam
When I lived in Ann Arbor back in the 1980s, Barton Dam was barely on my radar. The Huron River was scenic enough from the road: a heron or hawk here and there, maybe a deer ambling just off the shoulder. The dam itself, tucked out of sight from Huron River Dr., might as well have been invisible.
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Trade Off
On November 4, voters decide whether to raise property taxes by 1 mill for the next decade. The money raised—$25 million the first year—would support CTE programs like this one. Administrators can talk ad nauseam about the power of giving young people a variety of opportunities for instruction in specific career fields, but it’s student testimonials that have been front and center in the campaign to push through the millage. Yet the debate over the ballot question isn’t so much about support for or opposition to CTE as it is whether a new tax ought to pay for it.
Read MoreTarget: Public Health
“We don’t have the capacity or technical expertise to do research,” explains Washtenaw County Health Department (WCHD) administrator Susan Ringler-Cerniglia. “The CDC has critical resources when we need to respond at the local level. In the case of an unusual pathogen, we call on the CDC. It’s incredibly frightening to feel like we may not be able to rely on them.”
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