The Ragged Recovery
The good news is that more people are finding jobs lately. That’s true in the nation, in Michigan, and especially in Washtenaw County.After cresting at a painful 10.1 percent in October 2009, the nation’s...
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Bridge Bonus
The city plans to resurface or reconstruct 11.3 miles of road from April through November at a cost of $27 million. That’s almost triple 2011’s total of 5.1 miles for $8.6 million.Thank Uncle Sam, specifically,...
Read MoreDance for Mother Earth
Art Brandt’s belly laugh peals through the first-floor hallway of the Michigan Union as he describes a dance that linked hundreds of people at the 2004 Dance for Mother Earth powwow at Crisler Arena: “It started on...
Read MoreThe Curator Who Cared Too Much
“I am instructed by my dean to have no communication with the press.”That was the response of the usually chatty Steve Ball when the Observer asked about the response to a widely circulated Associated Press...
Read MoreSorting it out
Since the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority was launched twenty years ago, it’s recycled enough paper, glass, metal, and plastics to fill eighty football fields fifty-six feet high. But general manager Phil Bolyard...
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Hard Times, Big Plans
“The housing commission needs to change if we’re going to survive,” says Jennifer Hall.Ann Arbor Housing Commission board chair Marta Manildi says they had a pretty good year last year: “We brought in a...
Read MoreSwim for a Cure
Six local women plan to swim the Channel this summer.The “A2A3 Relay Team” is the brainchild of local attorney Amanda Mercer, a board member of Ann Arbor Active Against ALS. Local residents Kristin McGuire and Dave...
Read MoreBetter late than never
According to the list of street closings on the city’s website, Fifth Ave. between Liberty and William reopened the day after Halloween. The Downtown Development Authority website has it carrying traffic in December. So...
Read MoreThe Legacy of Renden Lemasters
In the early hours of June 15, 2004, a couch caught fire on the porch of a house on Oakland Avenue. Fed by the sofa’s stuffing, the blaze quickly engulfed the structure, putting two of the U-M football players who lived...
Read MoreThe Big Clean-up
From the east side of the Broadway bridge, a sidewalk winds down into Broadway Park, a peaceful pocket of lawn and trees tucked between the train tracks and the Huron River.From the bridge’s west side, there’s also a...
Read MoreThe Business of Tolerance
Since its founding by fusion two years ago, the Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti Regional Chamber of Commerce has supported the election of Republicans Rick Snyder and Mark Ouimet and opposed a city income tax—all predictably conservative...
Read MoreRetiring Champions
Partly because redistricting is about to reduce the number of Ann Arbor commissioners from four to three, and partly because they’re in their seventies, Barbara Bergman and Leah Gunn are retiring at the end of 2012 after a...
Read MoreThe Better Angels of Ann Arbor
This past summer, two men sexually assaulted seven women in and around the U-M campus. A rash of burglaries last year enraged folks on the near northwest side. And just a few weeks ago, a thief or thieves broke into four cars in...
Read MoreOff the Map
“It shouldn’t necessarily be easy to become a city,” says Dexter’s assistant village manager Courtney Nicholls as she rifles through a large box of papers in the village offices in downtown Dexter....
Read MoreSnyder’s gift?
In their radical reinvention of Michigan, governor Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled legislature have passed plenty of laws that have riled local governments, including expanding the power of emergency managers to take...
Read MorePeople or Animals?
Hard times make for hard choices.When jobs are lost and family income drops, it can force parents to choose between feeding their kids or their pets. And when property tax income drops and state revenue sharing all but...
Read More“We All Were Jackasses.”
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 MoreFire and Pain
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 MoreNew bridges at last!
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 MoreTwo seats, six candidates
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...
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