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.
Read More
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 More“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.”
At first, Wendy Turner, executive director and general manager of Michigan Public (broadcasting on WUOM and four other stations in Lower Michigan), was reasonably optimistic. So was Molly Motherwell, general manager of WEMU and president of the Michigan Association of Public Broadcasters. After all, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was still intact.
Read More
The August 5 special-election ballot consisted solely of two city charter amendments: Proposal A authorized the city to sell the air rights above the underground Library Lane parking structure to the Ann Arbor District Library for $1 for a “mixed-use development that includes additional library services, housing, retail and programmable open public space.” Proposal B repealed a 2018 amendment that had reserved the structure’s ground-level roof for “an urban park and civic-center commons.” Both got about 58 percent of the more than 23,000 votes cast.
Read More
Pioneer High at 3:01 p.m. has the feel of a busy commuter airport. Students pour out of classrooms shouldering backpacks, swinging musical instrument cases, laughing and chatting. Many are holding cell phones.
Those phones are a point of contention at all levels of the education system: from individual classrooms to the school district, and all the way up to the Michigan legislature.
As move-in began this August, Vic Village South’s website advertised, “Leasing Now Open for 2025–26!” Social media ads announced, “We have 1, 2, 3, and 4-Bedroom apartments available!”
Read MoreOn Tuesday, Ann Arbor voters headed out to the polls to cast their ballots on Proposals A and B for the special 2025 August election. After a heated race marked by lawsuits, lawn signs, and fervent online discourse, early...
Read More
As the increasingly bitter campaign over the future of the downtown library races to a close, both sides are spending the final days before Tuesday’s election making their cases by going door to door, flooding social media, and pushing targeted ads through mail and online platforms.
Read MoreMates watched the passage of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” in July with alarm. It will slash Medicaid funding by about $1 trillion over ten years—and the “big juicy target” is support for people with disabilities like her son Corbin.
Read More
As a lawyer for the City of Detroit in the 2010s, Savit says, “I saw the ways in which President Trump’s policies had harmed communities—and I also saw the ways in which state attorney generals were uniquely equipped to fight back.” People had been asking him if he planned to run for higher office ever since he was first elected in 2020, and Trump’s return was the tipping point.
Read More
One would repeal a 2018 charter amendment that reserves the space above the Library Lane underground parking structure for an urban park and civic-center commons called the Center of the City. The other would transfer the air rights to the Ann Arbor District Library next door for $1. Together, they’d enable construction of a new downtown library in a high-rise spanning both parcels.
Read More
The wage war began in 2018, when One Fair Wage, a national coalition of activists, workers and organizations fighting for a higher minimum wage for tipped employees, gathered 370,690 signatures to put the decision up to voters. If the measure had passed, the wage paid to tipped workers, then set at $3.84, would gradually be increased to match the statewide hourly minimum wage—which the same proposal would increase to $12 by 2022 and thereafter index to inflation.
Read More
Supporters argue that the city needs that “densification” to allow more people who work in the city to live here, to bolster the property tax base eroded by the U-M’s expansion, and repair economic and racial inequities caused by past “exclusionary zoning.” Opponents question whether growth on that scale is necessary or even likely. But if it does come to pass, they predict, it will be at the expense of the city’s neighborhoods, as apartments and condos crowd out single-family homes.
Read More
Without waiting for Congress to act, his appointees cancelled NEA grants that had already been approved—including $30,000 for the Ann Arbor Film Festival. The 2025 festival was in March, and “I had already submitted our final report and payment request,” says executive director Leslie Raymond.
Read More
Since city council decided not to expand the primary runway at the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport last December, some are asking questions about the future of the property.
Read More
City council voted unanimously in March to hold a special election on August 5 to consider two city charter amendments. Together, they’d enable construction of a new downtown library in a high-rise spanning the existing library parcel and the “Library Lot” above the underground parking structure.
Read MoreSchools throughout the country responded, some by shuttering diversity programs, some by renaming webpages to make their pursuit of DEI less obvious, and some by resisting.
Read More
Yet by April only eleven were actually foreclosed and sold, and all of them were vacant: ten lots and one house.
Read More
On December 1, 2021, Recycle Ann Arbor unveiled Ann Arbor’s revamped materials recovery facility (MRF). Their predecessor, ReCommunity, had trashed it back in 2016, and the upgrades came with a hefty price tag. RAA secured two grants but still had to take out $5.9 million in loans.
Read More