Burned
You’d think a township board meeting that included a twenty-minute fight between the supervisor and the clerk and ended with the supervisor’s abrupt resignation would be memorable.But it wasn’t unusual for...
Read MoreNews
More smarter cars
Jul 13, 2014 | News |
The number of Ann Arbor cars and light trucks equipped for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is about to triple.The high-tech gear required for vehicles to communicate with one another about their location, speed, and...
Read MoreOil in Scio?
Jul 10, 2014 | News |
Standing at the corner of Miller and West Delhi roads, Dagmar Moore points to an array of pink flags dotting the green field to the northeast.”That’s where they’ll go,” she says. “Oil derricks with...
Read MoreBreakthrough
The tumors were gone. A month earlier, scientists at the Pfizer laboratories on Plymouth Road had begun dosing mice bearing human tumors with a new kind of cancer drug. Now technicians examining the mice could feel nothing...
Read MoreThe Reinhart Legacy
From the mid-1980s through 2012 the horse race to watch in Ann Arbor real estate was between the Charles Reinhart Company and the Edward Surovell Company. “Every January, the numbers would come out,” laughs Steve...
Read MoreThe Coleman Era
A “Farewell Mary Sue” party in mid-March pulled out all the stops. Jeff Daniels introduced President Coleman to the crowd at the Michigan Union–faculty, staff, regents, and a lot of students. Regent Andrea...
Read MoreReasons for Hope
“By law we have to pass a balanced budget by our last meeting in June,” says Ann Arbor school board trustee Glenn Nelson. “This year that’s June 25.”To get there, the board will have to close a...
Read MoreSmall-town Heroin
Jun 19, 2014 | News |
Three or four years ago, Saline mayor Brian Marl recalls, then police chief Paul Bunten told him that Washtenaw County officials were alarmed that “heroin is becoming more prevalent” in the county. Until then, Marl,...
Read MoreTransit Triumphant
Jun 3, 2014 | News |
“I was shocked by the margin of victory,” says Ecology Center director Mike Garfield. “I thought it was going to be close,” says Garfield of the May vote on a 0.7-mill tax to expand bus service in Ann...
Read MoreThe Honesty Policy
It begins with a mistake. A doctor botches an operation, misses something on an MRI, or fails to make a diagnosis. Medical lawsuits are nothing new. Doctors are human. They make mistakes, and injured patients expect to be...
Read MoreThe Faculty Strikes Back
“The secret bonuses blew me away!”That’s U-M history prof Juan Cole, describing his response to the news that a growing number of university employees–chiefly top administrators–are receiving hefty...
Read MorePensions Get a B+
May 7, 2014 | News |
“The overriding influence on the pension plan over the past five years was the recession and the stock market crash,” says city administrator Steve Powers.Nancy Walker, executive director of the city’s...
Read MoreObama care
May 5, 2014 | News |
With a few days’ notice about President Obama’s April visit, the U-M spread more than a red carpet. Apparently, when the White House decided the eighty-plus-year-old Intramural Building was a choice spot for a...
Read MoreWhat Price Transit?
If Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township voters approve the transit millage on the May 6 ballot, property taxes in the three communities will go up $70 a year for every $100,000 in taxable value. That would increase local...
Read MoreEPA Comes Clean
The Environmental Protection Agency’s National Vehicle & Fuel Emissions Laboratory has quietly gone about its business on Plymouth Rd. since 1971, writing emission standards and testing cars and fuels sold in the...
Read MoreA Road Back from Walking the Streets
“Lisa” was ten years old the first time she was sold for sex. Sexually assaulted by her father at an early age, she’d been placed in a foster home in Lansing. But her foster mother was physically abusive, so...
Read MoreJohn Dingell’s Long View
Apr 25, 2014 | News |
“Look at him working the room!” an audience member marveled. Congressman John Dingell, eighty-seven, wearing a navy suit and leaning on a crutch, was moving from table to table at the Kensington Court Hotel, greeting...
Read MoreA Gravel Mine in Lyndon?
Lyndon Township is between a rock and a hard place.McCoig Materials, which operates seven concrete plants in the Detroit area, wants to open its first sand and gravel mine on 158 acres across from Green Lake. The site is smack...
Read MoreThe Hieftje Era
“I did everything I set out to do,” says mayor John Hieftje of his seven terms in office.Sitting in city hall’s south-facing first-floor conference room the day after the winter’s heaviest snowfall, Ann...
Read MoreCrime is down–again
Mar 12, 2014 | News |
The number of burglaries on the Observer’s Crime Map for December was so low it looked like a misprint: just eleven in the entire month, compared to seventy-nine in December 2012. It’s vivid proof of the old adage...
Read MoreUpcoming Events
- October 22, 2025 WXW Forum25 8:30 am
- October 22, 2025 Used Book Sale: JLC Book Sale 9:00 am
- October 22, 2025 Country Fair: Wiard’s Orchards 10:00 am
- October 22, 2025 Jason Mingjie Xu: Society for Musical Arts 10:30 am
- October 22, 2025 “Investigate Labs”: U-M Museum of Natural History 11:00 am