Archive for August, 2010

Editor’s note: The monthly milestone column, which appears on the second day of each month – the anniversary of The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s launch – is an opportunity for either the publisher or the editor of The Chronicle to touch base with readers on topics related to this publication. It’s also a monthly reminder to readers who read The Chronicle’s material with a feed reader or some other ad-free mechanism to click through to have a look at the recent ad archive. Some of them are very pretty.

Campaign yard signs. We caution against altering other candidates' yard signs ... except digitally.

Publisher of The Chronicle, Mary Morgan, wrote a recent column explaining why this publication is not making endorsements of particular candidates for tomorrow’s primary election. She appealed to an analogy of candidates as race horses. But we expect the winning thoroughbreds to pull the plow as draft horses once they’re elected.

The draft horse analogy works just as well for The Chronicle as a publication. Mostly what we try to do is plow the field of civic and community affairs in a way that’s as predictable and straight as a furrow left by a well-drilled draft team. We are somewhat plodding.

It’s still worth pointing out that we’ve made some of our coverage a bit more sprightly by filing basic results on individual issues straight from public meetings via the Civic News Ticker. We’re successfully piloted the Ticker over the last month. And we’re now content to commit to it as a stable feature. Readers no longer need to wait for days on end to find out how a vote turned out.

But teams of draft horses – no matter how well drilled, or how sprightly they step on occasion – are not typically recorded in history the same way as names like Secretariat or Man o’ War. Most Chronicle readers would be hard pressed to provide the name of some specific draft horse, past or present – other than perhaps the fictional Boxer from Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

So for this month’s milestone column I’d like to highlight some of the other draft horses on The Chronicle team – besides Mary Morgan and me. I’d like to make it more clear when readers voluntarily send us subscription dollars, they’re “voting” not just for the two founders of this publication whose livelihoods depend on its financial success. Voluntary subscribers are also voting for the other freelance writers who are helping to pull The Chronicle’s plow, and who earn part of their livelihoods from their work for The Chronicle.

Otherwise put, draft horses need some hay to eat. And maybe even some sugar cubes. [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority manages the city’s parking system under a contract last revised in 2005 to extend through 2015.

In early summer 2010, committees from the DDA board and the Ann Arbor city council set out a schedule of monthly meetings to renegotiate that contractual parking agreement.

Susan Pollay, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, takes notes at the end of the table an hour and a half into the July 12 meeting of committees from the city council and the DDA. On the white board behind her is the timeline worked out by the committees that led to the scheduling of additional meetings. (Photo by the writer.)

Faced with a target of Oct. 31, 2010 for a completed contract, the two groups – known as the mutually beneficial committees – have now increased the frequency of their meetings to twice-monthly. At the June 14 meeting, it was agreed that staff members from both the city and the DDA would attend future committee meetings, and that staff would prepare a matrix of policy points related to the parking system.

But at the July 12 meeting of the two committees, the matrix of policy points had not yet been prepared and no city staff were present. Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, attended the July 12 meeting as the DDA staff representative. And Pollay led the committees through a calculation backward from the Oct. 31, 2010 target date, which showed that an outline of the agreement needed to be ready by the very next monthly meeting – then scheduled for Aug. 9.

When committee members apparently teetered on the edge of abandoning the Oct. 31 target, Pollay gave them a nudge, tilting them back to terra firma. She was prepared to work with a sense of urgency, if that is a priority, Pollay told them – but if they already wanted to push past the deadline, then she was content to take it easy, too.

Committee members responded by deciding to add extra meetings to the schedule. Besides scheduling issues, the July 12 meeting also focused on: (i) contractual aspects of the current parking agreement that had possibly been overlooked in recent city council decision-making; and (ii) the appropriate length of the term and monetary consideration in the new contract.

On July 26, the two committees held an extra meeting, this time joined by Sue McCormick, the city’s public services area administrator. The task of creating the parking policy matrix had been taken on by Pollay, who had then worked with McCormick to produce a chart that included the city’s recommendations along with DDA suggestions.

The next regular meeting – the second Monday of the month – falls on Aug. 9, with an additional meeting planned for Aug. 23. [Full Story]

A Chicago Tribune article about the cost of the recent University of Illinois presidential search mentions that the search in 2002 for the University of Michigan president cost about $334,000. That search resulted in the hiring of UM president Mary Sue Coleman, following the departure of Lee Bollinger, who’s now president of Columbia University. [Source]

In his Research Views blog, Stephen Forest – UM’s vice president for research – describes a recent meeting of the Optical Society of America in Karlsruhe, Germany, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser. He talks about how lasers and other inventions have literally changed the world. “We do make a difference, sometimes with very positive impacts, and almost as often, with unintended negative consequences. We can, and do transform the world, from inventing nuclear weapons to creating revolutionary methods for linking people together, from inventing the internal combustion engine to warming the planet. It certainly makes me wonder: what’s next? And when will we recognize that yet another transformation has occurred?” [Source]

The Designated Conservative blog gives its recommendations for candidates in the Aug. 3 primary, endorsing a range of Republicans and Democrats for governor, state legislature, Washtenaw County board of commissioners and Ypsilanti city council. For Ypsilanti mayor, the blog’s author picks Pete Murdock, saying that as a city councilmember, “he has served as a de facto leader, moving the City Council in a more pragmatic and fiscally conservative direction…” [Source]

The Detroit Free Press publishes a feature about Ann Arbor-based Busch’s grocery chain, and its efforts to highlight Michigan products. The article quotes CEO John Busch, who talks about changes they’ve made in response to the economy: “It’s still a very competitive market, and until people get back to work it will remain a challenge.” In 2010, Busch’s is celebrating 35 years in business. [Source]

[Full Story]