Arbor Update

Local

Ypsilanti City Manager Proposes Steep Cuts

Posted by Dale Winling on 17. February 2006

Ed Koryzno, city manager for Ypsilanti, is proposing $1.6 million in city budget cuts over the next three years to preempt projected deficits, the Ann Arbor News reported today. Most controversial among the cuts are allocations to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) to fund seven routes serving Ypsilanti.

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Campus

Regents run from responsiveness & regularity

Posted by David Boyle on 17. February 2006

The new guidelines for speaking at UM Regents’ meetings include,

”...When will I speak?
Public [comments] will begin five minutes after the regular business agenda has ended. The regular business agenda generally starts at 9:00 a.m. The meeting schedule is posted online on the Monday before the meeting. ...”

There used to be a regular time, recently 11 a.m., formerly 4 p.m., for public comments. Now the speaking time is totally in the air.
That is, commenters may now have to attend the entire meeting from the beginning, lest they miss the end of the meeting and their chance to speak. (Commenters can risk missing the first hour, say; but what if the meeting winds up faster than expected?)
How is this fair to various people? whether disabled people, or people with jobs, or people with lots of morning classes, or people with children to take care of, etc.?
Running from regular public-comment speaking times, and any criticism or “rebellion” the comments represent, is hardly reponsive to the public.
There seems little other reason for the time change, than to inconvenience public commenters, i.e., to make activism or criticism of the Regents and administration as difficult as possible.
(I did hear one well-placed source say the reason for the change was that “there was a long delay between the regular meeting and public comments” last time or something; but has that never happened before? Maybe having six transgender rights activists speak to them at meeting after meeting is beginning to wear the Board down; though not worn down enough to extend transgender rights, just enough to change the speaking rules…)

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Campus

Slottow hits slots with 41% raise

Posted by David Boyle on 16. February 2006

See, e.g., U-M officer gets pay raise with reappointment to job ,

Timothy Slottow, chief financial officer at the University of Michigan, got a 41% pay increase when he was reappointed to his position Friday [late January] by U-M President Mary Sue Coleman.
The pay increase brings Slottow’s salary to $425,000. ...

This made the Free Press, complete with Slottow’s picture. As it should have, seeing Michigan’s fiscal problems.
The Daily, on its own “The Wire” newsblog, in ‘U’ gives CFO huge pay increase in time of budgetary crisis by Karl Stampfl, opined,

...The fact remains that if Slottow went into the corporate world he could probably make a lot more, but his salary increase comes at a time of mild financial turmoil at the University. Tuition dramatically increased for students last year. The University countered the hikes with financial aid, but for many it was not enough. Do you think some of our administrators are paid too much while students are suffering the burden? It makes sense that we need to retain administrators, but at what cost to students?

I shan’t even go into what the Coke Coalition may think of Slottow, although UM finally agreed to drop Coke, after endless student protest. (Nor has the UM financial office been fully open, to my knowledge, on when it supposedly achieved full UM divestment from Sudan…)
So what metric is operating here for the whopping 41% boost? If the Coke ban had been delayed another year beyond what the Coke protesters wanted, would he have received an 82% pay increase?

Campus

Free food + subletting advice @ MSA

Posted by David Boyle on 15. February 2006

“Subletting Advice Workshop this Thursday at 5:30pm at MSA Chambers
QUALITY FREE FOOD
Get the best legal tips on what to do, and what not to do, when subletting.
Know your rights, before you sublet!
Open to all students.
What: Subletting Advice Workshop w/ Student Legal Services
When: This Thursday at 5:30pm
Where: MSA Chambers, 3909 Michigan Union (3rd Floor of the Union)
Why: So you know your rights before you sublet, and QUALITY FREE FOOD!!!”

Campus

Student Group Organizing in Neighborhoods

Posted by Dale Winling on 15. February 2006

Students at the University of Michigan have formed another group devoted to engaging the city in student issues. Students Promoting Active Neighborhoods (SPAN) is an off-shoot of the new Michigan Progressive Party. This organization initially will focus on the student neighborhood in the 3rd Ward (currently represented on City Council by Jean Carlberg (D) and Leigh Greden (D)), nearly the only downtown-adjacent area of the city not represented by a neighborhood or commercial association.

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Campus

SCP joins DAAP, MPP, S4M. "OK"

Posted by David Boyle on 15. February 2006

In yesterday’s Daily article Fourth party joins crowded MSA race: Student Conservative Party aims to revamp assembly, reallocate unnecessary spending ,

“A fourth challenger has entered the ring in next month’s Michigan Student Assembly elections. The Student Conservative Party officially formed two weeks ago…
SCP hopes to decrease student apathy by making MSA less partisan [then why are they “Conservative”?]...
...LSA junior Tommi Turner will run for vice president. He [Tommi is female, per the Daily photo] said he [sic] had the option to run for Studens [sic] 4 Michigan but knew the assembly needed change.
Turner cited resolutions like the one MSA passed condemning the war in Iraq in 2003 as examples of the assembly’s flaws. “MSA is not here to change the way the world works; we are here to affect student concerns,” she [Turner is now identified as female] said.
The party was organized last fall when Clark learned that MSA had spent $20,000 to bring Ludacris to Hill Auditorium.
“The money would have been better spent on any hypothetical group, like the Wolverine F[ ]rt Club,” Fantuzzi said. [!!!]
...The party would also push the administration to bring Coca-Cola products back to campus. Members said it should be a student’s choice whether he approves of the beverage heavyweight’s business practices, not the University administration’s. [So much for divesting from South African products during apartheid…]
A similar party, the libertarian-leaning New Frontier Party, cropped up in 1998. The New Frontier Party lost that year’s election and never ran again, fading into MSA’s crowded graveyard of defunct parties. [See the present author’s 2/12/06 AU story Interesting MSA election race developments , “MSA election history is littered with the corpses of new parties which quickly died off after challenging the reigning Blue/Students 1st/Students 4 Michigan monoliths…”]
Party chair Clark Ruper, Fantuzzi and Turner are the only three members of the new party.
...Walter Nowinski, MPP’s candidate for vice president, said he will welcome the new views that SCP will bring to the upcoming election.
“We welcome as many new student parties as possible and are excited parties are defining themselves based on their ideals and visions for campus,” he said.”

Based on some of SCP’s positions and language (“f-rt”), I wonder if Nowinski is being more polite than needed. Even if SCP happen to end up as the real “No-Win-skis”, though, this author still wishes them a polite good luck.

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Local

You Win Some, you Lose Some

Posted by Juliew on 15. February 2006

In several recent discussions about downtown, “those in the know” have commented about the closing of seven downtown businesses. While some of these, like Ehnis & Sons, Afterwords, and John Leidy (East) involved long-time businesses, others were much newer. The Sunday Ann Arbor News ran an article enumerating the seven (which turned out all to be in the Main Street area). Below is their list and a few others from other areas downtown. On a positive note, several new businesses are also opening at roughly the same time and demand for street level retail space seems to remain high.

The reasons for closing are numerous. Reduced foot traffic and changing buying patterns seemed to be the two most often mentioned.

Closing or closed:
Ehnis and Sons, Afterwords, Seychelle, Love From Michigan, Forma, Moderno, Tabor Hill Winery, the east half of John Leidy, Shayani Rugs, and Options 4.

Opening or opened:
Pepperz, Hawkers Deli (surprisingly not a chain), Underground Printing, Everyday Cook, Moosejaw Mountaineering (a regional chain), Ana Banana, and Campus Nails.

Comment [5]

Local

This Week in Music

Posted by Brandon on 15. February 2006

There’s a lot happening on the local music front this week:

TONIGHT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with beer, friends, and music instead of poorly-constructed teddy bears and stale candy hearts!
GREAT LAKES MYTH SOCIETY (as seen in the New York Times and CNN.com this week!) http://www.greatlakesmythsociety.com
STARLING ELECTRIC (they sound as good as they dress… rising Ann Arbor baroque-pop) http://www.myspace.com/starlingelectric
THE MOODIE VETO (a new local band… expect the unexpected) http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=33509082
@ Leopold Bros. Brewery
523 S. Main Street
Ann Arbor
8:30 PM
$5
21+

More after the cut…

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Local

Happy Valentine's Day!

Posted by David Boyle on 14. February 2006

Or happy V-Day, for fans of the “Vagina Monologues”. (I am saying nothing about their interestingly explicit new poster on the UM campus, by the way.)
As for the Ann Arbor slant on Valentine’s Day: there is the romantic legend that the city is named after the two Anns who were wives of two city founders, see, e.g., About Ann Arbor: History: Background Information ,

”...Ann Arbor was founded in 1824 when John Allen and Elisha Rumsey left Detroit on a one-horse sleigh and headed west to establish a new community. Originally registered as Annarbour, it is believed that the “Ann” honors their wives Ann and Mary Ann and “arbour” refers to a grove or shady openings common to the area. Eventually the words were separated and the town became known as Ann Arbor – it remains the only city in the world with that name. ...”

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Local

Broadway Village Development to Go Forward

Posted by Dale Winling on 13. February 2006

The Ann Arbor News today reports that Strathmore Development Company has made lease arrangements with several health care groups for commercial space at the mixed-use Broadway Village in Lower Town, meeting the benchmarks of a development agreement with the city and triggering a city process to finance infrastructure development and cleanup at the site.

The names will be revealed in the next 30 days when Strathmore supplies the leases and other documents to the city of Ann Arbor. In 2004, the city approved a development agreement with Strathmore stipulating that the company had to pre-lease at least 75 percent of the commercial space before the city would issue $40 million worth of bonds necessary for infrastructure development, including a brownfield cleanup. Underground contamination has spread across the property to Traver Creek, said Chappelle.

You can read more about Broadway Village here and here.

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