News

60-40 Lesko?!

Today Ann Arbor voters choose their next state senator and state representative, two city seats on the county commission, and three city council members. They’ll also decide the Democratic mayoral primary between five-term...

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84-16 Hieftje!

They were breaking out the champagne at Cafe Zola Tuesday night, but is was for consolation, not celebration: the opposition city council candidates who gathered there all lost. The percentages hardly changed all night as the...

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County Commission Primaries

In Ann Arbor, the issues are social services and the budget.With Jeff Irwin running for the state house (see “Musical Chairs in Lansing”), four Democrats are seeking their party’s nomination for his District...

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Musical Chairs in Lansing

“A lot of state representatives are running for senate,” says Fifty-Second District state rep Pam Byrnes. Byrnes is one of them. So is Fifty-Third District representative Rebekah Warren. Both want to succeed state...

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A GOP State Senator?

Conventional wisdom says a Republican doesn’t have a chance to win Liz Brater’s Ann Arbor-centric state senate district. That hasn’t deterred Freedom Township farmer John Hochstetler and Northfield Township...

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Ramping Up

Last month, several homeowners on Arborview watched in amazement as heavy equipment pulled up in front of their houses and workers started jackhammering the sidewalk slabs that they had installed just two years ago during the...

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It’s the Budget, Stupid

The three Democratic council primaries on August 3 each have their own issues–core services, the Stadium bridges, and flooding among them. But beyond the incumbents’ loyalty to current mayor John Hieftje and the...

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From Conflict to Collaboration

“I don’t know that we’ve always played well together,” says Mo Riley, the newly hired director of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, the Original. Though the fairs have often cooperated in the past, relations...

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Defying Dingell

Cardiologist Rob Steele is running for Congress–from Ann Arbor, as a Republican–against Democrat John Dingell. At a fund-raiser in Barton Hills at the end of May, he schmoozed, moving from couple to couple and...

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AnnArborcom a Year Later

Even as the website with the acorn logo has boosted its traffic, the twice-a-week print newspaper, also called AnnArbor.com, reaches far fewer households than the old Ann Arbor News.While they acknowledge some missteps in...

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Art in the Huron

William Dennisuk and three helpers were waist deep in the Huron River in early June, installing a lightbulb-shaped metal sculpture near where the river enters the U-M Arboretum. The bronze rods caught the sunlight beautifully...

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Is This Building Necessary?

All of the Loyal Opposition candidates question council’s decision to build a new home for the city’s police force and Fifteenth District court. “We don’t have enough money,” says mayoral candidate...

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Taking on the Council Party

Mayoral candidates John Hieftje and Pat Lesko are each aligned with a trio of council candidates in the August 3 Democratic primary: Hieftje with fellow incumbents Sandi Smith, Carsten Hohnke, and Margie Teall; Lesko with fellow...

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Satan for Mayor?!

With a month to go, the Ann Arbor Democratic primary is already the nastiest local election in a generation. What other election has had a mayoral challenger who says she’d vote for Satan before the incumbent–and the...

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Hurt Locker

In April, the whiteboard in Pioneer head coach Jeremy Gold’s office listed a long roster of spring visits by colleges looking for football players. On May 11, Yale and Harvard were coming. On the following days, Penn and...

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Tipping Point

It’s about to get a lot easier to recycle in Ann Arbor, a city which prides itself on being green. So why isn’t everybody happy?The city’s switch to single-stream recycling, starting in July, means residents...

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Mark Koernke’s War

On the weekend that the FBI raided the Hutaree militia, the war that Mark Koernke had prophesied for decades seemed finally to have begun. From his bunker–a dilapidated farmhouse just outside Dexter–Koernke went...

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Rest Stop Revamp on US-23

Q: What are they doing to the US-23 rest stop just north of Ann Arbor?A: The building has been removed, and the parking lot was torn out too. It is a fresh start for a rest stop that was born in the 1960s. Part of a statewide...

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Janitors’ Blues

While Ann Arbor’s teachers negotiate a proposed 4 percent pay cut, the district’s custodians quietly agreed to give up twice that much.AFSCME negotiator DeAngelo Malcolm says he believes that “Everybody should...

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Michigan Radio Rules

“We want to sound like someone you’d invite over for Sunday brunch,” says Michigan Radio program director Tamar Charney: “smart, informed, interesting, and polite.””In other words,”...

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