Exit Interview
Sabra Briere meets a reporter at the downtown Sweetwaters. Two people at the next table stand to give her hugs when she comes in and hug her again when they leave, with accompanying “I love you”s. “People here...
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Software Blues
Human resource information system (HRIS) companies promise the sun, the moon, and the stars. But they sometimes deliver an asteroid–and Ann Arbor’s been hit twice. When the City of Ann Arbor switched to Ultimate...
Read MoreDill’s Moment
In February 2016, the county board of commissioners appointed county infrastructure boss Greg Dill as interim administrator. Last month, it gave him the job permanently.The appointment ended a messy, drawn-out search process...
Read MoreElection Aftermath
President Obama’s appearance at a get-out-the-vote rally the day before the election was a thrill for his many Ann Arbor supporters. It was also shocking: the Hillary Clinton campaign wouldn’t have sent its most...
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Turning the Research Ship Around
In her State of the University address in October 2009, then-U-M president Mary Sue Coleman proposed doubling the university’s annual research spending by 2017, to $2 billion. “It would require a tremendous...
Read MoreThree Millages
After years of negotiations following decades of failed attempts, the four-county regional transit millage nearly didn’t make it to the November 8 ballot.Two weeks before the language was finalized, Oakland and Macomb...
Read MoreReligion vs. Regulation
In 2012, Pittsfield Township rejected MIA’s request to build a new school on twenty-seven acres on Ellsworth Rd. With help from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the group sued. It looked like the township...
Read MoreRecycling Rift
After just a week on the job, new city administrator Howard Lazarus terminated the city’s contract with ReCommunity, the company that’s processed recycling at the city’s Materials Recovery Facility for the last...
Read MoreSlates Are Back
After nearly a decade’s absence from the local political scene, two slates are on the November ballot, one for the school board and the other for the library board. Eight candidates are running for each nonpartisan body....
Read MoreEarly Voting
The doors to the city clerk’s office are closed on Fridays this month to give city clerk Jackie Beaudry and her staff time to prepare for the November 8 presidential election. On the job since 2005, Beaudry expects a huge...
Read MoreFour More Years?
While state and national elections occur every two and four years, half of city council is up for election every year. In practice this means voter turnout in odd-numbered years, with only local races on the ballot, is much...
Read More“A High Level of Satisfaction”?
Does that mean they’re happy with local government?Complicating the answer is that in two of the three races, voters had to choose among three candidates. “A three-way race is difficult for challengers,” writes...
Read MoreRoundabout Crashes
Accidents increased fivefold when the exceedingly congested intersection at State and Ellsworth became the county’s first two-lane roundabout in late 2013, from twenty-nine in 2012 to 168 in 2014–instantly making it...
Read MoreCrossing Water
Shopping at Meijer recently, Mike Hood saw pallets stacked with bottled water–and began to cry. The bottles, he says, “represented so much trauma and pain I couldn’t even talk.”Until last fall, Hood,...
Read MoreNo Contest
“Being mayor of Ann Arbor is a great job.”So why don’t more people want it?”I don’t know,” Taylor says. “I’m delighted to be serving.”There are primary races in three of the...
Read MoreThree Races, Eight Candidates:
The August 2 city council primary is odd in more ways than one.Mayor Christopher Taylor and councilmembers Kirk Westphal and Julie Grand are heading to reelection unchallenged (see Inside Ann Arbor, p.13). In two other wards,...
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