Dec 2, 2011 | News |
Depending on your perspective, the war between Washtenaw County and Ypsilanti Township over the price of police services lasted either five or eight years.It’s five if you believe, as county officials do, that the conflict...
Read MoreNov 29, 2011 | News |
Lieutenant Scott Robertson loved his life as a member of the Ann Arbor Fire Department. “I hired in on November 10, 1985,” says the forty-nine-year-old. “In fact, the current chief and I, we started on the same...
Read MoreNov 27, 2011 | News |
Work begins this month to replace the failing Stadium Boulevard bridges–and thanks to a quick change of plans, the city will pay only a fraction of the estimated $23 million price tag. Homayoon Pirooz, who heads the...
Read MoreNov 5, 2011 | News |
To save money, the state dictated that school board elections move from June to November this year. Troubled times create candidates, and after three years of double-digit state funding cuts, these are troubled times indeed for...
Read MoreNov 4, 2011 | News |
“I would look at it as an insurance policy,” says Homayoon Pirooz, head of the city’s Project Management Unit. The “insurance policy” is Proposal 2 on the November 8 ballot: a .125 mill tax that...
Read MoreNov 3, 2011 | News |
State and national politicians get a bye in odd-numbered years, but in Ann Arbor, half of the city council stands for election every November. Since the mid-2000s, when the city’s last moderate Republicans switched...
Read MoreOct 31, 2011 | News |
Ask developers what their business is really about, and they’ll give you an assortment of answers. For some it’s simply a revenue game; for others it’s about historic preservation or community building or job...
Read MoreOct 25, 2011 | News |
Dashing between Ypsilanti, Detroit, and Bloomfield Hills, three young U-M grads spent a hectic week in September shooting three ads for Mountain Dew.Marty Stano, Debashis Mazumder, and Natalie Condon landed the plum commission,...
Read MoreOct 16, 2011 | News |
In Washtenaw County, buses are city dwellers. The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, aka TheRide, runs an extensive system in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, with connectors stretching east to Canton and west to Chelsea. But the only...
Read MoreOct 10, 2011 | News |
“I’m getting back to being a normal person,” says Ann Arbor artist Lynda Cole, calling while driving back from Grand Rapids where her kinetic sculpture “Rain” took third prize in the city-wide, much...
Read MoreOct 1, 2011 | News |
Asked how the reinvention of Michigan is working for the Ann Arbor School District, school board president Deb Mexicotte replies, “Lousy.”Governor Rick Snyder is pushing local governments and school districts to...
Read MoreSep 29, 2011 | News |
If the economy is bad, publish only positive business news, and funders will line up to bask in the glow. That’s the profitable formula of Ann Arbor’s Paul Schutt, who has built a small empire, including the local...
Read MoreSep 28, 2011 | News |
On July 28, ten days after the announcement that Borders was toast, CEO Mike Edwards called together the staff at the company’s headquarters. A decade ago, 1,300 people worked in the fortress-like white building in an...
Read MoreSep 5, 2011 | News |
In my fifty years of serious U-M football watching, this pre-season was the most difficult for me to parse. Will the 2011 Wolverines be any good? Will they be awful? The strands of information are a tangle of competing...
Read MoreSep 4, 2011 | News |
Brady Hoke wasn’t the first coach on most U-M football fans’ wish lists. But just seven months into his tenure, many have embraced him with an enthusiasm that verges on giddiness. “I’ve put up a tag on...
Read MoreSep 2, 2011 | News |
“One way or another, dispensaries are going to be short-lived,” predicts Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje.In 2008, a hefty 63 percent of Michigan voters approved a ballot proposal legalizing medical marijuana. Just days...
Read MoreSep 1, 2011 | News |
Governor Rick Snyder is pushing Michigan municipalities and school districts to adopt what he calls “best practices.” For cities, villages, and townships, that means three things: accountability, consolidation, and...
Read MoreSep 1, 2011 | News |
Ask Chelsea Mayor Jason Lindauer what’s wrong with the city’s current police station, and he’ll answer with a question: “How much time do you have?”Ask police chief Ed Toth, and he’ll answer...
Read MoreSep 1, 2011 | News |
When Ann Arbor switched to single-stream recycling in 2010, the single biggest expense was the $3.6 million the city spent gutting its Materials Recycling Facility on Platt Road and completely refitting it with new machinery to...
Read More