Opinion Section

An important tenth year anniversary is coming up, but it’s not one I’ve been looking forward to.

I first met Mike Lapprich when I was an assistant hockey coach at Ann Arbor Huron High School, and he was just a ninth grader. He was a big defenseman with a baby face, a shy guy with an easy smile – an oversized puppy.

I came back five years later as the head coach, when Lapper, as we all called him, had just finished his first year as an assistant coach, at the ripe age of 18. The team we inherited had not won a game in over a year.

When I met the returning captain, Mike Henry, over lunch that summer, he brought a list of things he wanted to discuss. The first: “You have no idea what you’re getting into.” The second: “Lapper’s our man. He’s the guy we trust. Keep him, and treat him right.”

It was not a suggestion. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” opinion column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month.

What’s most struck me since I started talking about guns earlier this year is the degree to which just factually stating U.S. gun injury and fatality numbers constitutes an “argument” for “gun control.” [1]

I don’t particularly feel like I’ve argued for gun control. In fact, I’ve tried to be pretty clear that I don’t think this should be an “argument” or “debate” to begin with – and that most of what people suggest when they talk about “gun control” is either unworkable or unconstitutional.

But regardless of my druthers, there is a “gun control debate” in America.

Since simply stating the fact that 30,000 people will be killed by gun-fired lead this year – almost all of them in moments of hate, sorrow, or anguish – means I’m “arguing for gun control,” then let’s take a few minutes to give full credit to the argument against. Let’s look at those numbers. [Full Story]

At a recent forum for Democratic primary candidates for the Ann Arbor city council, Ward 5 incumbent Mike Anglin expressed a generally positive outlook about the direction the council and the city are headed. But Anglin did not have praise for the level of participation in primary elections: “Our turnout in a primary election is devastatingly low. It’s embarrassingly low. And our community cannot be proud of that at all.”

How bad is it? The August 2012 Democratic primary featured contested races in four of the city’s five wards – with voter turnout ranging from a high of 13.9% in Ward 5 to a low of 8.2% in Ward 1.

In Wards 1 and 4, the winner received less than 1,000 votes. That compared to a citywide turnout of 56.2% in the November 2012 mayor’s race.

What about the Republican primary? If you’re not familiar with Ann Arbor politics, that’s a punch line.

Only in Ward 5 did voters have a choice of city council candidates in November 2012 – Republican Stuart Berry or Democrat Chuck Warpehoski. And 62% of the ward’s voters turned out to choose Warpehoski – by a wide margin. In the other wards, the decision had already been made – in August, by fewer than 10% of registered voters in those wards. In Ward 3, no candidate stepped forward as an alternative to incumbent Democrat Christopher Taylor, in either the primary or the general election.

While Anglin recently lamented the lack of participation in the Democratic primary, I don’t think that exhorting residents to vote on Aug. 6 is likely to bump participation to anywhere near the level we might see in November. So the decisions about who represents Ann Arbor residents on the city council will likely again this year be made when less of the electorate will head to the polls – in August, not November.

But Ward 2 will be a definite exception. That’s because voters will choose between two formidable candidates in November: Democrat Kirk Westphal (unopposed in the primary) and incumbent Jane Lumm, who’s indicated she’ll again be campaigning as an independent. They might be joined by independent Conrad Brown, if he submits enough signatures by the August deadline.  Still, in Ward 2, there’s no question the choice will be made in November, not August.

In Wards 1, 3 and 4, other independent candidates affiliated with a University of Michigan student group calling itself the Mixed Use Party have taken out petitions. None have yet filed the required signatures. But to the extent they prove to be serious candidates, voters in those wards might also feel they were offered a legitimate choice in November.

But when three legitimate candidates take out petitions, why are we forcing a selection between just two of them – precisely at a time of year when few voters turn up at the polls to make that selection?

Take Ward 3 as an example. Julie Grand, current chair of the city’s park advisory commission, and incumbent Democrat Stephen Kunselman are solid choices. They’ll be offered to voters in August. Only one will advance to the November general election. And as voters get to know him, independent Sam DeVarti – if he files his nominating petitions – could also prove to be another solid choice in November.

If they’re all three credible candidates, I think a more rational approach to an August primary would be to use that initial election to winnow the field of all three (or more) candidates down to two. That way the important choice, between the two finalists, would come in November, when more voters participate. Or all the candidates could be offered to voters in November, with no primary election at all.

It’s fairly common now for a city council election to draw only two candidates, both Democrats, who compete in August. If there’s no other candidate in the race at all, it would be more rational to offer those same two candidates to voters in November, when many more voters participate.

That kind of rational approach to candidate choice would be possible if Ann Arbor city council elections were non-partisan.

But under the city charter, Ann Arbor city council elections are conducted on a partisan basis.

Last year around this time, former city attorney Bruce Laidlaw wrote two op-eds for The Chronicle, the first explaining the historical background for Ann Arbor’s partisan system, and the second making a case for changing the city charter to provide for non-partisan elections.

There seems to be at least some interest this year in moving the idea forward. One indication came in a response to a recent Ward 2 resident satisfaction survey. An open-ended question asked respondents to identify the one issue that councilmembers should focus on in the next six months. Among the question’s many responses was this one: “Implement a non-partisan election process for city council and mayor.”

A question about non-partisan elections also was posed this week to Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje, who spoke at a Rotary Club lunch. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: This marks the launch of a new column in The Chronicle, focused on Ann Arbor Public Schools and other educational issues. Readers might know Ruth Kraut from her commentary on Ann Arbor Schools Musings, where she’s been writing about these issues for several years. For recent background on The Chronicle’s coverage of AAPS, see “Milestone: Why You Keep Running a Marathon.”

Next week, the board of the Ann Arbor Public Schools will need to cut about 5% from the district’s budget. That’s a reduction of about $8.6 million. Teachers have already taken a 3% pay cut.

Per-pupil funding for next year ($9,025) will be less than the per-pupil funding of 12 years ago in 2001-2002 ($9,034). So it’s no surprise that we’re at the point where cuts are painful. Cutting teachers, cutting programs – none of it is happy news. There will be consequences. The question is, what kind of consequences?

In the civil rights world, a “disparate impact” occurs when a policy is non-discriminatory in its intent but affects a “protected class” of people in a disproportionate way. In Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, for example, these protected classes include race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, and marital status.

AAPS is a district with a large achievement gap – between white students and African American and Hispanic/Latino students. And this gap has persisted for many years. Although in state civil rights law, income is not a protected status, income is highly correlated with race, age, and marital status. District-wide, there is also an achievement gap that is related to income: Poor kids are more likely to do poorly in school.

So it’s important to consider the AAPS budget from a perspective of potential disparate impacts. On the surface, the proposed budget cuts treat all students equally. But if we look deeper, would we find that certain budget cuts worsen – or perhaps improve – the achievement gap?

Three proposed budget cuts have raised a significant amount of opposition this year: (1) eliminating high school transportation; (2) cutting reading intervention teachers; and (3) cutting seventh hour or making it a tuition-only option. Together, these three account for just under $1.5 million of the $8.6 million in cuts. Do these cuts, in particular, have a disparate impact on any groups? [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority has enjoyed significant attention from the city council through the spring – and that attention will continue at least through next week.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) has been leading the effort by the council to have an impact on the DDA – first by proposing ordinance amendments, then by bringing forward a proposal during the council’s FY 2014 budget deliberations on May 20 – to reallocate DDA funds toward housing. More on that later.

Next week’s June 3 city council meeting would have marked the start of a three-month DDA-free period on the council’s agenda. However, Ward 2 councilmembers Jane Lumm and Sally Petersen, joined by Sumi Kailasapathy from Ward 1, have now placed a resolution on that meeting’s agenda calling on the DDA to allocate money for three additional police officers dedicated to patrolling the downtown area.

For Lumm, this might appear to be a course reversal. Earlier this spring she argued that funding for police officers should be found within the regular city budgeting process. She argued that police officers should be paid for with city general fund dollars – because the city is responsible for public safety. Specifically, she argued that the city should not be looking to the DDA to pay for police.

Yet it’s not actually a course reversal for Lumm. If you follow the city council and the DDA closely, her position now – calling on the DDA to fund police – makes perfectly logical sense, if “logical sense” means “political sense.”

The fact that this reversal makes perfect political sense is not an indictment of Lumm specifically, but rather of the entire 11-member council. They’ve managed as a group to forget what they accomplished together at their retreat in December 2012.

At that retreat, the council achieved a consensus that the city’s achievement of success for the public safety area would not be measured by the number of sworn officers. Instead they agreed that success would be based by actual crime stats, perceptions of safety by residents, and an objective measurement of the time that officers can spend on proactive policing. Yet the council’s debate on May 20 reverted to the familiar past habit of measuring safety success by counting sworn officers.

To the credit of the June 3 resolution’s sponsors, their proposal at least claims that adding police officers downtown would contribute to the perception of increased safety – a nod to the council’s retreat consensus. But I can imagine arguments both ways about whether that claim is true.

The council’s general distraction from its budget retreat consensus might be linked to the energy spent on the DDA. So what has stoked that interest? The fuel for this political fire is the perverse interpretation the DDA has given to Chapter 7 of the city code, which regulates the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) revenue. The DDA contends that the revenue constraint that’s articulated in Chapter 7 isn’t really a constraint. The DDA further contends that the $470,000 it returned to other taxing jurisdictions in 2011 was paid back “erroneously.” Kunselman’s ordinance amendments would exclude the DDA’s interpretation.

Throughout the council’s months-long debate about the DDA, the DDA board and staff have enthusiastically participated in city council politics. They’ve done so in a way that has not added much value to the city of Ann Arbor, except in the form of political drama.

In this column I’ll lay out the DDA’s role in the most recent political play that was performed at the council’s May 20 meeting. [Full Story]

Most sports fans are happy just to see their team make the playoffs. But Detroit Red Wings fans have been able to take that for granted for a record 22 straight seasons. The last time the Red Wings didn’t make the playoffs, not one current NHL player was in the league. Some of the current Red Wings weren’t born. Nine current franchises weren’t yet created.

But the record seemed doomed to be broken this season.

To start, there almost wasn’t a season at all, thanks to the contract dispute between the players and the owners, who both thought the other side was making too much money.  And, of course, both sides were right – setting up a game of chicken between self-destructive lunatics.

When a federal mediator finally brought them to their senses in January, they had just enough time left to play a 48-game schedule – which actually seemed about right. But the Red Wings came out flat-footed, falling so far behind they had to win their last four games just to sneak into the seventh of eight playoff spots.

In the first round, they faced the Ducks of Anaheim – formerly the Mighty Ducks – which is already an affront to everything that is holy about hockey.

Amazingly, the Red Wings beat them in seven games – quite an upset. Their reward: an even tougher opponent, the top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks, who earned at least one point in their first 24 games, which is a record.

But for hardcore hockey fans – and really, are there any other kind? – this series was a reward. [Full Story]

The Chronicle’s monthly milestone column is by custom published on the second day of the month. It’s a chance for us to touch base with readers on topics related to this publication.

It’s not June 2 yet, so today’s publication means we’re jumping the gun a bit. That’s due in part to a selfish, practical interest I have in not writing separate emails to every reader who inquires: Where is your coverage of the Ann Arbor Public Schools? We’ve suspended that coverage for the indefinite future – but obviously not because we don’t think education is important.

When The Chronicle first launched back in 2008, we didn’t offer any coverage of the local public schools. Mostly through sheer good fortune we found independent freelancers – first Jennifer Coffman, and then Monet Tiedemann – who were able to provide coverage of AAPS to Chronicle readers.

It is not easy to find writers who believe that The Chronicle’s approach to coverage – through detailed reports of public meetings – is a worthy endeavor. And among those who believe it’s worth doing, it’s not easy to find writers who can actually meet the standard. And among that smaller group, it’s not easy to find those who are able to reconcile the economics of the compensation we offer with the sacrifice of time and effort.

It is really not easy to find a writer who is willing to sit through a school board meeting that lasts until 3 a.m.

The Chronicle’s publisher and I can absorb a certain amount of flux in available resources, but we’re past capacity. The size of our organization means that when a single person isn’t able to continue in a particular function, it can mean the end of the coverage that person was providing. So for the immediate future, we won’t be able to continue schools coverage.

And for the medium to longer term, I don’t anticipate being able to restore schools coverage unless our revenues through voluntary subscriptions and advertising were to dramatically increase and show evidence of sustaining that increase.

Ultimately, providing sustainable regular coverage of a public body will require more than the good fortune of finding people who, for a while, can wedge The Chronicle into their lives based on the compensation we can offer.

Isn’t some schools coverage better than none at all? Perhaps so. In this column, I’ll lay out my thoughts on that in terms of a metaphor familiar to regular readers of The Chronicle’s milestones: marathon running. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” opinion column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month. At the May 20, 2013 meeting of the Ann Arbor city council, a resolution will appear on the agenda that would establish a task force on “economic development.” This month we asked Nelson to write about a segment of the local economy we think is likely to receive scant attention from that task force: independent workers. [0]

In abstract, my monthly column is about money – how money is a way that we signal our values, the way we track our interest, and the trail left by our investments of time and attention.

Last month I wrote about the stuff I do to earn money. This month let’s talk about something I do that can’t conceivably ever earn me a damned dime: The Workantile.

The Workantile is a business-like entity on Main Street in Ann Arbor [1]. In contrast to pretty much any other “business” on Main Street, we sell neither goods nor services.

Our business is maintaining a space where a community of independent workers can sit together and work on their own things. Our space is around 3,000-square-feet, and has lots of rolling tables and chairs (so that the space can be reconfigured in any way that interests the members and serves their ends), as well as a kitchenette, a clean and commodious bathroom, a couple of phonebooth-esque things, a couple of conference rooms, some lockers and bike racks, and an awesome printer/scanner/copier.

We also have half of an ancient, homebrew quadrophonic stereo hooked up to a wifi bridge which, combined with our brick walls, high ceilings, and hardwood floors, means that we have a pretty sweet-ass dance hall sound system, too. [2]

Some of our members work together formally – either for the same employer with home offices in some distant and exotic place (usually California), or on projects of their own devising. But mostly we work separately, tapping away on our keyboards with headphones on.

We work on our own without having to work all alone. It’s nicer than a coffee shop, because there’s no milk-steamer roar, no awkward break-up happening at the next table, and no creepy old dudes leering at your sandaled feet. Our doors lock, so the crazies are limited to those who stay current on their membership dues (i.e., me).

You can go to the bathroom without worrying that someone is going to steal your laptop or rifle your purse. Also, when clients meet you in a coffee shop, they think, “Ugh. I guess this is how we have to do business in the 21st Century.” When clients meet you at Workantile — with our industrious brick walls, antiquey tin ceilings, and huge windows — they think “I can’t believe this gal isn’t charging me more!”

That, my friends, is an excellent thing for your clients to think.

So, to dispense with the hard sell: Come down today (or any other weekday) for a tour and a FREE Day Pass!!! [Full Story]

For decades, students at Michigan football games were assigned seats, with the seniors getting the best ones. But last year, according to the Michigan athletic department, roughly a quarter of the 22,000 people in the student section were no-shows. So, athletic director Dave Brandon decided to switch the student section from assigned seating to general admission – first come, first seated – to get them to show up on time. Or, at all.

In fairness, growing student apathy is not unique to Michigan, nor is the move to general admission seating. And not all top programs allow every student who wants season tickets to get them, as Michigan always has.

Nonetheless, the students, who were accustomed to starting in the end zone as freshmen, then moving year by year toward mid-field, went ballistic. They gathered more than 2,000 signatures for a petition, and 1,500 “likes” for their movement on a Facebook page, just three hours after the announcement. In an admittedly unscientific poll conducted by The Michigan Daily, 85 people said they “love it” while 497 said they “hate it.”

Yes, some students can display a breathtaking sense of entitlement. And they won’t get much sympathy from the average fans, who have to pay two or three times more for their tickets, plus pay out a Personal Seat Donation – and that’s only after they get off a wait list, which costs another $500 just to get on it.

But before we bash the students too much, perhaps we should ask why they’re not showing up. Getting mad at your paying customers for not liking your product as much as you think they should, then punishing them for it, is probably not something they teach at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. [Full Story]

We’re roughly midway through The Chronicle’s fifth year. That means in September we’ll mark a half-decade of publication.

At that point, we will likely write a column with some reckoning of total words, or total number of public meetings covered, or some other statistical breakdown.

And even though we will say, “It’s a half decade,” those numbers will not mean we are half way there. Because there is where the finish line is. And in this race The Chronicle has been running, there is no finish line.

In that respect it is not like a marathon – when you know at the start that if you settle into a sustainable pace, you will eventually finish. But for a race that has no finish line, what does a sustainable pace even mean?

Here at The Chronicle, a sustainable pace means that the business is financially stable enough to cover the freelance writers, basic business expenses and the livelihoods of a full-time editor and publisher. But The Chronicle is not sustainable in an important sense. It requires a full-time effort from two people – and here I don’t mean 40 hours, or 60 hours, or even 80 hours a week. I mean basically every waking moment.

So The Chronicle is not sustainable in the sense that it’s a business that could be sold to someone else to carry on – unless that someone else were two people who are willing to run down a race course that offers a simple livelihood with few water stations and some occasional cheers.

To pound this running metaphor completely into the ground, The Chronicle is not sustainable in the sense that it could passed like a baton to the next runner in a relay. And that reminds me of a relay race I ran a quarter century ago in my hometown of Columbus, Indiana.

It was called the May Day Medley.  [Full Story]

Berlin-born Sonoma, California aquapreneur Julius Poppe chaperoned his group of 83 passengers on board a steamer moored in Bremen, Germany. The 12-day journey to New York that summer of 1872 proved deadly. After arrival and a two-day quarantine, only 8 of Poppe’s charges survived.

Poppe settled them onto a train. The Transcontinental Railroad linking the West Coast to Iowa and the eastern rail network had been completed only three years earlier. Despite Poppe’s best efforts for those in his care, two more died in San Francisco, and another died on the boat from San Francisco to the coast near Sonoma.

Five had survived the nearly 7,000-mile journey – only the youngest, each about the size of a pen. Poppe placed them in his pond that August, hoping for their survival.

By the following May, the five German carp, also known as scale or common carp, had spawned 3,000 young. They also helped spawn a short-lived nationwide carp craze. In Michigan, state fish officials’ initial enthusiasm turned to alarm as the non-native’s depredations became another one of the state’s late 19th-century ecological disasters. [Full Story]

A mayoral proclamation made at the Ann Arbor city council’s April 15, 2013 session was not recorded in The Chronicle’s report of that meeting. Omission of such proclamations is pretty typical for our meeting reports.

In this case, I think it’s worth circling back to pick up that proclamation, which declared today, April 29, 2013, to be Jim Toy Day in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s Toy’s 83rd birthday.

The proclamation itself details how Toy was the first publicly out gay man in Michigan, and whose advocacy work over the last 40 years has included, among other things, the founding of the program that became the Spectrum Center at the University of Michigan. He’s the namesake of the Jim Toy Community Center.

The proclamation made at the April 15 city council meeting earned Toy an uncommon standing ovation from councilmembers.

What I wanted to record in The Chronicle’s archives were Toy’s own remarks, which he delivered after receiving the honor. The meeting took place several hours after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, which Toy briefly mentions.

Jim Toy: Mr. Mayor, members of council, staff of the city of Ann Arbor, my comrades, and our allies, I am more grateful and humbled than I can say for this recognition – the recognition of the work of our entire constituency and of our allies. The city has advanced freedom and justice without ceasing for many oppressed individuals and groups and will continue to do so.

We thank everyone in our inter-sex, transgender, bi-sexual, lesbian, gay male, queer community, and we thank our allies for your support and advocacy through these two score years of working for justice and freedom – justice and freedom compromised and stained by the blood that has been shed by countless victims of anti-TBLGQ violence, violence generated by fear and hatred, as blood has been shed today in Boston.

Let me thank you all with deep gratitude for your patient support since 1971. I thank you for enduring my inadequacies, my prejudices, my isms, and my fear. I beg forgiveness of all whom I have ignored, neglected and wounded during these 40 years. [Full Story]

This week, a company called “CareerCast.com” ranked more than 1,000 American jobs, and determined that the worst job in America isn’t garbage collector, dog cage cleaner or Lindsay Lohan sobriety tester – but journalist.

Yes! Score! Booyah!

They based their rankings on four criteria: the workplace environment, the industry’s future, average income, and stress.

Okay, it’s true: newsrooms usually aren’t pretty places, and the future isn’t any prettier for newspapers. You can make more money doing a lot of other things – and, yes, the stress is very real. The hours are long and late, and many of our customers think they can do our jobs better than we can. They’re often nice enough to take the time to tell us that – even if they’re complaining about a different news outlet that screwed up and somehow we’re responsible. Hey, at least they care.

Journalists themselves reacted to this ranking with all the calm, cool, collected professionalism of Geraldo Rivera and Nancy Grace. But here’s why: newsrooms aren’t for everybody, but we like them – the hustle and bustle and energy and urgency. We like the stress, too – no matter how much we complain about it – because it comes with doing work we believe actually matters. [Full Story]

In the depths, it is tough to have faith that all things must pass.

I have been cobbling together a living since July 2009, when New York-based Advance Publications shut down Ann Arbor’s daily newspaper. It was a trauma, pure and simple, for me and for many of my colleagues. After almost 20 years at The News and 30 years as a newspaperwoman, my “career” was dead and the newspaper industry eventually would be, too – at least as we knew it. Some really bleak months followed for all of us.

One of the ways I pay the mortgage now is with earnings from my freelance editing business. One of my clients was the Michigan Theater, which in 2011 hired me to edit a history of the theater. The manuscript’s author, Henry Aldridge, recently retired from the faculty of Eastern Michigan University; in the 1970s he rallied the community to rescue the Michigan from the wrecking ball and for decades has been one of the theater’s organists.

Over a number of months Henry and I would meet at Biggby Coffee on East Liberty Street and, chapter by chapter, shape his story of how a movie palace built for silent films in the 1920s weathered dramatic shifts in the film industry and the damage done to downtown America by postwar suburban sprawl, to ultimately stand firm as an Ann Arbor cultural landmark. It is an inspiring tale.

After one of our sessions we stood together outside Biggby and glumly beheld the dead sidewalk in front of the newly vacated Borders flagship store – a community institution that the community could not save. The ironies did not escape us.

The loss was especially personal for Henry; the bankruptcy had thrown a young friend of his out of a job she adored. Shannon Alden was a 14-year veteran of Borders with a passion for children’s literature. Henry was prodding her to find another way to use her gifts for connecting with people and sharing her delight in books. He urged me to contact her if only to offer some moral support; both of us had taken a hard blow to our sense of purpose because of a revolution in the economics of reading. Newspapers, bookstores – the Internet was killing them both.

So it is not a little ironic that months of blogging and Facebooking kept us up to date on the city’s much-anticipated new downtown bookstore before Literati officially opened its doors at 124 E. Washington St. on Easter Sunday. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” opinion column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month. FYI, Nelson has recently written a piece for The Magazine about a device to adapt a digital camera to pinhole technology, called Light Motif – possibly of interest to Chronicle readers.

This was going to be another column about “gun control.” Despite my repeated threats to be “done talking about guns,” it turns out I had another roughly 8,000 words worth of opinion, math, and legalistic nitpickery. (Spoiler alert: Prospects are bleak for “gun control” fixing the problems we want fixed.)

But then events unfolded in Boston, and it was the opinion of this fine publication’s editor that maybe we should go with something a bit more “light and fluffy” to break up our unbearably bleak march to the grave.

To this I assented [1]. It’ll be back to guns next month.

So for this month I’ll return to a topic I’ve written about before: education. This time I’ll start by asking: How do school books get written? And who writes them?

I can shed some light on the first question, because the answer to the second one is: This guy! And not all of them are classroom reference works on Internet pornography.  [Full Story]

At its April 15, 2013 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council likely will take a final vote on changes to the local ordinance governing the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. On April 1, by a 7-3 vote, the council gave initial approval to the changes.

In the interim, the city council has undoubtedly received communications lobbying for and against these changes. Among those communications was a letter sent on April 12 – with signatures from representatives of eight different entities that have significant specific interests in downtown Ann Arbor: “We write to oppose the proposed ordinance amendment … [P]aramount is the proposed change to the current ordinance procedure for calculating potential rebates of higher than anticipated TIF revenues back to taxing units …”

One of the eight signatories is unique – for two reasons.

First, the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Regional Chamber is the only one of which The Ann Arbor Chronicle is a member.

Second, the chamber is unique among the eight because it’s the one that has the legal and public policy resources to arrive at a position based on the legal and public policy merits of the issue. But in this case, the chamber has chosen a view that seems only half-informed by legal and public policy analysis.

With access to legal talent like Doug McClure, a recent candidate for 22nd Circuit Court judge who is chair of the chamber’s public policy committee, I’d expect this regional chamber to support the kind of clear, solid, forward-looking legal foundation that the proposed ordinance amendments would provide for us as a regional community. That’s especially true given that so many people – for and against the ordinance changes – agree that the current ordinance language lacks clarity.

And the idea that the chamber would support whatever interpretation the DDA chooses to give the ordinance – in the DDA’s sole judgment, with millions of regional tax dollars at stake – is bizarre from a public policy point of view. It’s especially bizarre given that this purportedly regional chamber has access to regional public policy talent like Andy LaBarre. He’s the chamber’s vice president of government relations who’s a former staffer for Congressman John Dingell. LaBarre is also an elected representative serving on a regional governing body that has tax dollars at stake in this debate – the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

But the chamber chose to glance past the legal and public policy issues, opting instead to allow personal, petty mayoral politics to cloud its collective thinking.

What’s even more incredible is that the chamber has chosen wording for its letter – which it then recruited the other entities to sign – that would actually point an alert reader to the relevant legal and public policy issues. If the chamber itself had taken the words in its own letter more seriously, perhaps that would have guided the organization to take a position in favor of the ordinance changes.

In this column, I’ll lay out an analysis of the wording that the chamber has chosen – “… which the DDA calculates using its judgment within the standards set by the ordinance” – and explain why those words point the way to supporting the ordinance changes. [Full Story]

It wasn’t that long ago that Michigan’s basketball program was not merely unsuccessful, but the shame of the athletic department, if not the university.

Bo Schembechler, then Michigan’s athletic director, fired basketball coach Bill Frieder after he found out Frieder had flown out to accept the coaching job at Arizona State just a few days before the NCAA tournament was to begin. Schembechler famously barked, “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan!” Assistant Coach Steve Fisher filled in, and the team “shocked the world” by winning Michigan’s first-ever national title in basketball.

But, on the eve of Fisher’s ninth season, he, too, was fired, because some of his players had been paid by a booster. Another assistant coach, Brian Ellerbe, was named the interim coach, which usually is a mistake – and this proved no exception. At Ellerbe’s first Big Ten tournament, in 1998, the Wolverines pulled a rabbit out of a hat to win it, and Ellerbe was named the permanent head coach. But three years later he was also fired, partly because of a bad record, but mainly because some of his players had been paid by the same booster.

The NCAA launched an investigation that lasted years. Tommy Amaker, the next coach, had to deal the investigation, the probation that followed, and subpar facilities. He never made the tournament, but he left Michigan’s program much better than he found it.

Former athletic director Bill Martin started raising the money and making the plans for a new practice facility and a complete renovation of Crisler Arena – which ultimate cost about $100 million when it was finished in 2012 – and hired Michigan’s current coach, John Beilein, to take advantage of it. Beilein came to Michigan with a strong resume, having taken three different schools to the big dance, but not a high profile. [Full Story]

Even in a smaller-sized city like Ann Arbor, governmental issues can be fairly complex. Still, our local issues are typically simple enough that they can be mastered even by an ordinary citizen who can read words on a page.

However, over the last several weeks, a significant issue has been brought forward for debate that’s been portrayed by some local officials as far more complex than that.

For now, let’s not even think about what the issue might be. It could be zoning. Or dog parks. Or parking rates. Or police staffing levels. Or public art. Or express bus service. Or outdoor signs. Or none of those. Call it Issue X.

As I’ve chronicled the workings of Ann Arbor’s local governance recently, I’ve watched as two local representatives – one elected and one appointed – have seemed to portray Issue X as too mathematically challenging to grasp. I chalk that up to politics: If the math can be set aside, then the conversation can more easily move to pure politics – the strong suit of elected and appointed officials.

To be clear, Issue X is fraught with politics. But I don’t think that focusing on the politics of Issue X serves the interests of Ann Arbor residents.

Issue X is also fraught with mathematical calculations. But not everyone is comfortable with equations.

So in this column I’ll sketch out an analogy that I think, on a purely conceptual level, accurately captures the essence of Issue X – in non-mathematical, non-political terms. [Full Story]

Sports columnist Rick Reilly once wrote that weekend golfers invariably claim, “I’m a good golfer. I’m just not consistent.”

Well, he said, if you’re not consistent, you’re not a good golfer.

Americans are great at building things, and rotten at maintaining them. We admire winners and celebrities, but we overlook the loyal spouse and the honest accountant and the people who maintain our bridges – and that’s why they’re falling apart.

So, let this be a salute to consistency – that most unheralded virtue.

In 1984, Red Berenson took over Michigan’s moribund hockey program, which had not been to the NCAA tournament in seven years. Berenson thought it would be easy, but it took seven more years to get Michigan hockey back to the big dance in 1991.

Once they got into the tournament, they made it a point to stay there. Year after year, they suffered heart-breaking tournament losses, but year after year, they kept coming back. Finally, in 1996, they won Michigan’s first national title in 32 years – and they did it again in 1998. They’ve come close a few times since, but they have yet to win another.

This bothers Berenson, one of the most competitive men I’ve ever met. When he visited my class, I introduced him by listing his many accomplishments on the board.  When he stood up, the first thing he did was point to the two national titles on the board and say, “That’s not enough. We should have more.” [Full Story]

Washtenaw County owes a long-forgotten debt to Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the chaos following Napoleon’s first invasion into Spain in the early 19th century, the Spanish crown lost control of a resource it had jealously guarded since its acquisition from the North African Berber people in the 11th century.

For centuries, Spanish royalty forbade this resource to leave the country, and Spain steadily accumulated wealth from the commodity it produced. One expenditure of this wealth funded a young Italian explorer on his 1492 journey to what he apparently expected would be India.

This possession was the royal flocks of merino sheep, and the commodity was arguably the finest, softest, most luxurious wool on the planet.

Some American statesmen in Europe in the early 19th century took advantage of the post-invasion upheaval to smuggle out these esteemed sheep.

One was the Lisbon-based American consul to Portugal, William Jarvis. Around the turn of the 19th century, he shipped a dozen merino sheep to America. They sold for $15,000 [$216,500 in today’s dollars].

When Madrid-based minister David Humphrey’s term ended, he asked if instead of the usual parting gift of 100 bars of silver he might take home a few merinos. His request was granted sub rosa. The minister to France, Robert Livingston, obtained a few. So did George Washington. More were smuggled in for Thomas Jefferson, who began a merino breeding program at Monticello. When Jefferson was elected president, his merinos accompanied him to Washington, pastured on the White House lawn.

The merino craze was on. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” opinion column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month. FYI, Nelson has written a piece for The Magazine about a device to adapt a digital camera to pinhole technology, called Light Motif – possibly of interest to Chronicle readers.

Thanks for returning for this second installment of Dave Not Really Taking a Meaningful Position on Gun Control. As you’ll recall, last month we talked about What Guns Are and Aren’t [1].

This month, we’re just going to talk numbers, because if you get your vision of the world from the daily news, then your impression is probably something like: (a) Guns kill maybe three dozen people per day, mostly in murders (many of which are committed by cops in the line of duty); (b) Lots of little kids find guns, play with them, and get killed; (c) Gun injuries aren’t that common; these things basically kill you or don’t, and most injuries are accidents [2]; and (d) NRA is a deservedly powerful voice in the national conversation about guns and gun control.

All of that is wrong.

I fully acknowledge that the fourth point has some aspects of opinion to it; the first three do not. These first three are demonstrably incorrect.

Just to get the punchline out of the way, in America: (a) Guns actually kill 86 people per day, and only about a third of those are murders; (b) A very small percentage of gun accident victims are kids; (c) Gun injuries are more than twice as frequent as deaths; and (d) NRA doesn’t have enough members to warrant the influence they wield. [Full Story]

National Sunshine Week started yesterday. That’s not a celebration of daylight saving time, which started the same day. But the two could be connected. Yesterday’s annual conversion to daylight saving time is supposed to give everyone some extra literal sunshine toward the end of the day. Sunshine Week is an occasion to remind ourselves of the extra figurative sunshine in our governance – ensured in many states through legislation enacted in the 1970s.

Sunshine Week is an occasion to remind ourselves that open government is good government.

Michigan has two laws that are key to open government: the Open Meetings Act (OMA) and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Both of these laws rely crucially on good faith. For example, the FOIA allows a public body to deny access to certain public records – like those that are protected by the attorney-client privilege.

If a record is requested and then denied based on the attorney-client privilege, a requester has no way of judging whether the assertion of privilege is appropriate. A requester relies on the good faith of government officials that privilege is not inappropriately extended to records that are not in fact protected by privilege. A requester can resort to a lawsuit, which under Michigan case law can result in the review of the records by a judge to confirm – or refute – the public body’s assertion of privilege. But few requesters have the wherewithal to file a lawsuit over a FOIA denial.

Here at The Ann Arbor Chronicle, we’re celebrating Sunshine Week by laying out a recent occasion when we requested records under the FOIA, were denied the records, appealed to the city administrator, were denied under the appeal, but then were able to obtain some of the records by other means. The record in question is an email written by Ann Arbor city attorney Stephen Postema. This provides an opportunity to evaluate independently, without filing a lawsuit, whether the city inappropriately asserted attorney-client privilege in denying access to a record.

We consulted on the matter with an attorney, Marcia Proctor, who agreed to analyze the relevant factors in a hypothetical scenario. Proctor is former general counsel of the Michigan Bar Association, a specialist in legal ethics, whose practice specializes in professional responsibility for lawyers and judges.

We first present the hypothetical scenario, followed by a brief discussion of the relevant factors in the scenario identified by Proctor. We then present the text of the email and apply the various tests outlined by Proctor. We reach the conclusion that the city inappropriately asserted attorney-privilege to the document.

We then evaluate whether a different exemption provided by the FOIA might apply. That exemption allows a public body to withhold communications internal to the body – to the extent that they are non-factual and preliminary to a final decision by the body. In the balancing test prescribed by the state statute, we reach a different conclusion than the city did: We think the public interest in disclosure outweighed any interest the city had in shielding this frank internal communication from public view.

Finally, we urge the city council to weigh in on the city’s administrative policy on FOIA response, which is currently being revised. It’s important for councilmembers to set the overarching principle that guides the city’s FOIA responses. And we think that guidance should be biased in favor of disclosure. [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor city council’s March 4, 2013 agenda includes a proposed change to the city ordinance (Chapter 7) governing the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. I think most of those ordinance amendments have considerable merit, and warrant the council’s consideration. But it’s possible that the amendments themselves won’t receive their due consideration, because they’ll be dismissed as politically motivated.

The Chapter 7 amendments are being proposed by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who’s been joined by Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) in sponsoring them. Kailasapathy’s co-sponsorship might help only incrementally to buffer the proposal against criticism that they’re motivated by Kunselman’s personal political aspirations.

On that theory, Kunselman is proposing revisions to Chapter 7 in an effort to raise his profile – in anticipation of a possible mayoral candidacy in 2014, and to shore up support for his Ward 3 re-election campaign his year. Given that he took out petitions for the 2013 Democratic primary on Nov. 3, 2012 – before the Nov. 6 general election – and collected signatures outside the polls, it’s pretty clear that he’s eager to seek re-election to his council seat. And last time around, in 2011, he campaigned as much against the DDA as he did against either of his two opponents. Kunselman is quoted in the February 2013 issue of the Ann Arbor Observer saying that if mayor John Hieftje runs for re-election next year, he’ll run against Hieftje.

However, on the theory that these proposed amendments are all about Stephen Kunselman and not about good public policy, I figure it’s also reasonable to toss in another possibility. Perhaps Kunselman is trying to raise his profile enough to win local blog Damn Arbor’s current poll as “most attractive councilmember.” The poll includes Kunselman as one of just four nominated councilmembers. It’s not clear to me if the voting is meant to include sartorial choices, but if it does, Kunselman could objectively be considered a natty dresser.

All kidding aside, it would be easy and convenient to dismiss the Chapter 7 amendments as a political ploy, and save the work of understanding some gnarly tax calculations. [You'll have a head start on this if you've read my previous column on the issue: "Tax Capture is a Varsity Sport."]

But I think at least some of the proposed changes to Chapter 7 have considerable merit, independent of Kunselman’s political ambitions. Millions of dollars are at stake. As councilmembers give this proposal initial consideration on March 4, I hope they focus on the tax-related amendments. [Full Story]

A few years ago – okay, a bunch of years ago – I bit on a bet I never should have touched.

I was writing for the Detroit News, and a top minor league hockey team called the Detroit Vipers played at the Palace. So, I got to thinking: just how big is the gap, really, between the pros, and beer league players like me?

Good question. And even better if I didn’t try to answer it. But, being the hard-hitting investigative journalist that I am, I had to go down to the Palace and find out. Bad idea.

I called the Vipers, and they said, sure, come on down to practice. Now, I couldn’t hear them laughing themselves silly when they hung up – but I bet they were. I should’ve known I was biting off more than I could throw up. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Laura Bien’s most recent “In the Archives” column highlighted a 19th century scam involving oats. That column briefly mentioned a lightning rod scam. In this month’s column Bien provides a bit more background on lightning rod swindles.

Scams and swindles proliferated in the late 19th century, despite a sometimes idealized modern-day view of the period. “Work at home” offers targeted housewives in an era with very few opportunities for women to gain respectable work outside of the home. The candidate had to purchase a sample embroidery kit or small artwork, complete it, and return it to the company. Invariably, the finished work was never acceptable – because the companies made their money not in farming out work to home-based workers, but in selling samples.

Patent medicines were rife. Food adulteration was common. Fake doctors took trains from town to town, offering miraculous cures. Promissory-note shenanigans took place.

One little-known yet strange swindle, which affected Washtenaw County farmers, the state as a whole, and elsewhere, involved no more than a simple metal stick – a lightning rod. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: A version of this column was originally published in the Feb. 18, 2013 issue of Michigan Today.

In the Michigan hockey program’s 90-year history, some 600 players have scored more than 10,000 total goals. But the man who scored the team’s very first goal, 90 years ago, might still be the most impressive one of the bunch.

He was the son of legendary American architect Albert Kahn, who built the most recognizable buildings in Detroit and Ann Arbor, almost all of which still stand. He pioneered the new discipline of neurosurgery, serving 22 years as chief of the department at the University of Michigan Medical Center. In his free times, he liked to fly planes, speak half a dozen languages, and hang out with folks like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Lindbergh.

But to his teammates, back in 1923, Eddie Kahn, MD ’24, was simply an exceptional college hockey player.

When he was in high school, however, you would have been wise to predict none of this. Certainly, his famous father didn’t. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” opinion column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month. FYI, Nelson has written a piece for The Magazine about a device to adapt a digital camera to pinhole technology, called Light Motif – possibly of interest to Chronicle readers.

This is not a column about “gun control” [1]; it’s a column about guns, and it’s a column about control, and it’s ultimately a column about the quick and the dead.

But it’s not about gun control. As of this moment, I have no stable opinion about gun control; I’m not conflicted, but I’m still doing the math. My next column will be closer to being about “gun control” – and you can expect some math then.

But today, let’s just talk about guns.

I own two functional guns. One is a Beretta AL 391 Teknys, which is a semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun. I’m told the AL 391 family is popular with bird hunters, although I use it for shooting clays – a hobby I was introduced to by my father. I also own a Browning Challenger .22 target pistol.

As Americans, we take it for granted that guns are tools for solving problems. I thought that too, back before I’d ever actually shot a gun. But I don’t think that anymore.

In this column I want to talk mostly about the pistol. [Full Story]

Congratulations! You not only survived that annual orgy of conspicuous consumption called the Super Bowl, you also survived the two weeks of endless stories without news that lead up to the big day.

And when the big game arrived, what was our reward? On the one day we actually look forward to watching TV ads, they were so bland and boring and just plain bad, we had no choice but to turn our attention to the actual football game.

Has it come to this?

But back to the point of the whole exercise: The Super Bowl ads.

To say a bunch of ads were disappointing is like complaining that your dentist’s routine cleaning is getting predictable. We usually don’t expect ads to do anything more than annoy us.

But with Super Bowl ads, all the hype raises our expectations, and all the money companies spend – a record four million dollars for a 30-second ad – only increases the pressure.

Trying to be funny is the one, surefire way to make sure you’re not. And, because the ads are so expensive, every executive at every company has got to throw in his two cents, which is trying to create comedy by committee. And that’s the second surefire way to be sure you ain’t funny. [Full Story]

The Chronicle’s milestone column was originally conceived as a monthly feature – an opportunity for either the editor or the publisher to relay housekeeping news to readers, or offer opinions on topics related to media and journalism. It was also conceived as a monthly reminder to readers that actual human beings who live among them are reporting, writing and editing this publication.

The monthly milestone column was also a vehicle for reminding readers that it takes regular financial contributions from readers like them to sustain this publication. As we look to transition this from a monthly to an occasional column, we’d like to maintain a monthly schedule of reminders to folks: If you perceive a benefit from The Chronicle to yourself and the broader community, then please consider contributing financial support so that benefit can be sustained.

So, to maintain a regular monthly reminder, especially in those months when we don’t publish a milestone column, we’re trying out a blue overlay – which should have appeared on your screen if you visited the website today (Feb. 2, 2013). In some ways, it’s an awful and ostentatious way to greet Chronicle readers. But to make it go away, just click in the upper righthand corner on the “close button.” It shouldn’t appear again for the duration of your visit.

Of course, instead of clicking on that “close button,” we’d prefer you clicked on the SUBSCRIBE link. Or failing that, we’re hoping that the blue overlay might remind you to review your check register for the last time you wrote out a check to The Chronicle.

And of course, if you’re already sending your regular financial support to The Chronicle, we’d like you to interpret that blue overlay as a thank-you. We hope it will encourage you to mention to your friends, co-workers and acquaintances that you voluntarily subscribe to The Chronicle, and suggest they do the same. [Full Story]

Even those who don’t follow sports probably know the Super Bowl is a week from Sunday.  And, for the first time ever, in any major American sport, the opposing head coaches are brothers. More important for Michiganders, they are the Harbaugh brothers, John and Jim, who went to Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. So, you’ll probably start to hear lots of stories from the folks who met them along the way.

Well, count me in.

Their dad, Jack, coached under Michigan’s Bo Schembechler in the ’70s. His oldest son John played football at Pioneer High and Miami of Ohio, then worked his way up the ladder until he became the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens in 2008. He told the Washington Post he’s based his coaching philosophy on Bo’s coaching philosophy.

John’s younger brother Jim has had a complicated relationship with Michigan, but not with Bo. Jim is my age, and when we were 12 he was Michigan’s ball boy – which made all of us envious. I played against him in baseball, and with him in hockey. That was my best sport, and I was just barely better than he was – that’s my claim, anyway – and hockey was his fourth sport, which he played on the side during basketball season. Guess which one of us became a sports writer? [Full Story]