Dexter, Saline, and Chelsea are very different cities, with very different mayors. Yet each tells the same archetypal political story: the call to public service, the challenge–for all three, the Great Recession–and...
Read MoreWith 300 furious teachers, parents, and students filling Skyline High School’s auditorium, the June Ann Arbor school board meeting inevitably turned ugly.During the meeting’s public comment period, fourteen speakers...
Read MoreThe Second Ward Democrat says that’s why he plans to propose changes to city elections this month. “We started talking about election reform leading into the mayor’s race last summer,” recalls Ward...
Read More“I’m very concerned about the city going back to the way it was,” says Geoff Perkins, a board member of the Builders and Remodelers Association of Greater Ann Arbor. He and other members complain that before...
Read MoreWhen the Observer interviewed Rick Snyder in December 2010, the newly elected governor figured he had six months–from his inauguration on January 1 until the legislature’s summer break on July 1–to reinvent...
Read More
That’s what New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman called a recently discontinued practice by the U-M’s Institute for Social Research. For the last five years, Thomson Reuters Corporation paid the ISR up to $1.2...
Read MoreWhen Marios Demetriou does the math for the governor’s proposed 2015-2016 school budget, it sounds good–at first.”All Michigan schools would see an increase in their [per-pupil] foundation allowance of...
Read MoreWhen James Woolliscroft heard the news in January 2007 that Pfizer was closing its drug research campus on Plymouth Rd., he thought, Wow, what an opportunity.This was far from the majority sentiment in Ann Arbor. The city faced...
Read MoreQ. When reviewing my water bill I noted that there was no sales tax included. If there is no need for a sales tax on water usage, why is one needed for telephone, electricity, and natural gas usage? A. That’s the law;...
Read MoreRecent changes in national flood insurance policy outraged many homeowners who found properties moved into a floodplain for the first time–but in Ann Arbor the effect has been largely reversed, if only temporarily.The...
Read More“It was love at first sight,” gushes Nichole Nilsson. She’s speaking of her first visit to Nixon Farms while planning her September 2013 wedding. “The minute we walked into the barn, we thought this was...
Read MoreWhen county administrator Verna McDaniel announced her retirement in February, her bosses on the county commission asked her to stay while they searched for a successor. But they also played a wild card: “We’re...
Read MoreWill Dexter’s schools annex Whitmore Lake’s schools? Not anytime soon.”The discussion was put on hold,” says Dexter Community Schools superintendent Chris Timmis. “The cost model really...
Read MoreFor the past five years, the Ann Arbor Public Schools have contracted with the Washtenaw Intermediate School District to operate their school buses. But in January, the school board notified WISD that it wouldn’t be...
Read MoreLast fall, Northside Elementary reopened with a new name–Ann Arbor STEAM @ Northside–a new principal, almost all new teachers, and an enrollment of 407 students–more than double last year’s 185.The new...
Read MoreWe’ve been alerted to a scam ad in the March 2015 Observer classifieds. A reader who responded to the ad above–for a free 1987 Honda 1200 motorcycle–thought the explanation sounded “fishy,” googled,...
Read MoreMaurita Holland says the last straw was when the deer ate her rain garden. The retired School of Information prof replaced a patch of turf with a sunken garden of native plants–only to discover that the deer that roam her...
Read More“I was very open in 2012 about why I ran for another term,” says John Hieftje the day after the November election confirmed Christopher Taylor will succeed him as mayor. “I wanted to make sure the city got...
Read More