Archive for April, 2011

In 1985, Rob Reiner made a movie called The Sure Thing, starring John Cusack as a college student who made a 3,000-mile journey on a break from school in order to meet up with a “sure thing” – a girl who didn’t need any convincing to have sex.

Given the movie’s plot, it was a little odd to hear a scene from it cited by an Ann Arbor city councilmember to bolster a budget argument.

Carsten Hohnke, who represents Ward 5 on Ann Arbor’s city council, used the “credit card scene” from that movie – without naming the movie or giving the broader context of the plot – during a meeting of two committees on Monday morning, April 4, 2011. Known as the “mutually beneficial” committees, one is composed of Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board members and the other is made up of city councilmembers.

To understand the reference to The Sure Thing scene, it’s useful to have some brief background on the city-DDA parking drama. Understanding that drama, in turn, leads to some interesting conclusions about the relationship between the city and the DDA, and about what city councilmembers might be willing to say to get what they want. [Full Story]

The Detroit News reports that University of Michigan researchers and Dr. Mark Hughes, president of Genesis Genetics in Detroit, have created two new stem cell lines, which will aid in the research of two hereditary diseases: hemophilia B and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. The article quotes Gary Smith, co-director of the UM Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies: “These cells aren’t necessarily going to drive us toward discoveries of stem cell replacement therapies, but will give us information we’ve never had before with regards to how the diseases form and progress.” [Source]

Ann Arbor Public Schools board of education regular meeting (March 30, 2011): Wednesday’s meeting of the Ann Arbor Public Schools board began by welcoming incoming superintendent Patricia Green to the district. Trustees selected Green, who’s been superintendent of schools at North Allegheny School District in Pennsylvania, as the next AAPS superintendent at their March 5 special meeting.

Green was in town for a brief visit to meet with members of the administration and will start her tenure here in July. Noting that she hopes to make one more visit before then, Green stated her commitment to connecting with the district and encouraging members of the community to reach out.

Wednesday’s meeting was highlighted by talk of how to deal with looming budget issues. The board discussed – then unanimously approved – a resolution opposing the transfer of some state School Aid Fund money, which has traditionally financed K-12 schools, to fund higher education instead. Trustee Andy Thomas called the proposed transfer “a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario, done in a very underhanded manner.”

Budget issues were also a key part of a report to the board by Brit Satchwell, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association, the teacher’s union. He said the union’s efforts are focused on educating the public about sacrifices the district would have to make to accommodate proposed cuts, keeping in mind concessions that have already been made.

Also during Wednesday’s meeting, the board voted to expand the district’s schools of choice program. They got an update about a partnership with the University of Michigan involving Mitchell Elementary and Scarlett Middle schools, and heard a report on efforts to reduce energy costs throughout the district.

Four people spoke during the time set aside for public commentary. Speakers expressed concern over the district’s scheduling of events in conflict with religious holidays, and objected to a proposed expansion of the parking lot at Haisley Elementary School. [Full Story]

A post on The Lunch Room blog documents construction of an eponymous vegan food cart. It will be one of the vendors at Mark’s Carts, a new food plaza that’s opening later this month next to Downtown Home & Garden, at Washington & Ashley. [Source]

A Reuters report, published on CNBC.com, describes results from a clinical trial of a heart valve replacement technique developed by Edwards LifeSciences Corp., which provides an alternative to open-heart surgery. The article quotes Susan Housholder-Hughes, a nurse practitioner at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, who supports using the technique: “These are elderly patients that don’t have much stamina and until now they have had to undergo open heart surgery, which is like getting hit by a truck. The less invasive procedure should offer them a quicker recovery and get them back on their feet and doing the things they enjoy and want to do.” [Source]

In a Civic News Ticker item about a resolution added to the Ann Arbor city council’s April 4, 2011 agenda, the word “not” was mistyped for “now” and not caught during editing. It changed the meaning of the sentence where it appeared, which should have read: “Also on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda is an item that would establish a process under which the Ann Arbor DDA would facilitate the development of downtown city-owned surface parking lots, which would now presumably include the top of the underground parking structure.” We note the mistake here and have corrected the original item.

[Full Story]

Photographer Lon Horwedel posts images from the April 2 Hash Bash, which drew several thousand people to the University of Michigan Diag. [Source]

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 time that we highlight, with gratitude, our local advertisers, and ask readers to consider subscribing voluntarily to The Chronicle to support our work.

I’d like to begin this month’s milestone column by sharing some good news about one of The Chronicle’s writers – Jennifer Coffman, who covers the Ann Arbor Public Schools board of education for us. Last week she gave birth to a baby girl: Eleanor Olivia Coffman. So she’s on a break from The Chronicle for a while.

Until Coffman returns, Eric Anderson will be providing The Chronicle’s AAPS board coverage. Eric grew up in Ann Arbor and is a graduate of Hope College. His experience includes work as a reporter at the Hillsdale Daily News and an editorial intern at the Washington Post Express. He’s planning to attend graduate school later this year.

Coverage of the AAPS board has become part of the meat-and-potatoes reporting provided by The Chronicle, along with reports on the Ann Arbor city council, the Washtenaw County board of commissioners and many other public bodies.

But not everything published in The Chronicle is meat and potatoes. I think it’s a relatively small portion of our overall corpus, but some of our material is probably more like a Twinkie than a piece of meat.

Many of the Stopped.Watched. items, for example, might be analyzed as more like Twinkies than a T-bone steak. Which, I think, is fine – for Twinkies, like T-bones, are also food. I wouldn’t want to make a meal out of Twinkies, though.

The Ann Arbor Active Against ALS Twinkie Run, which took place on April 1, serves as a nice analogy to the way we think of The Chronicle material that’s more like Twinkies.

On Friday evening in Gallup Park, the 271 runners who competed in the 5K race were presented with a choice on each of two laps through the park: (1) Take the time to eat a Twinkie and earn a 1-minute deduction to their finish time, or (2) Just keep running and take the straight-up meat-and-potatoes time. The annual run was observed last year as a Stopped.Watched. item. [Full Story]

For over 40 years, Ann Arbor wine retailer Village Corner was a fixture on South University, near the University of Michigan’s Central Campus, until it closed last November to make way for a student high-rise at 601 S. Forest.

Dick Scheer, an iconic figure in Michigan wine circles, owned the store that entire time. When it closed, Scheer stashed his inventory in temporary quarters, took his Terminator turn – “I’ll be back!” – and pledged to reopen shortly in a venue with better parking, as he told Sandra Silfven of the Detroit News.

Then, nothing. Scheer went to ground, keeping his own counsel as he sought a new location, to the not-infrequent exasperation of long-time customers and members of the media alike.

Until last week, when the website of Michigan’s Liquor Control Commission (LCC) spilled the beans: on March 17, Village Corner applied to relocate its beverage licenses to another campus-adjacent address.

North Campus, that is.

The new location, at 1747 Plymouth Road in The Courtyard Shops, sits between No Thai! restaurant and Jet’s Pizza, in a storefront formerly occupied by Tanfastic tanning salon. [Full Story]

Writing in the April issue of Saveur magazine, columnists Jane and Michael Stern report on their search for “the Jewish deli rye that good meats deserve.” They write: “But America’s very best deli rye? No contest. We found it in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when we noticed that the bread that Zingerman’s Deli used to construct our Diana’s Different Drummer sandwich (brisket, Russian dressing, coleslaw, and horseradish) was sensational. It comes from Zingerman’s Bakehouse, which makes loaves of rugged rye that are dense and springy, laced with the taste of hearth smoke.” [Source]

At least a couple of local websites are getting into the spirit of April 1. Monahan’s Seafood reports a “shocking” new species discovery: “Looking down on one of thousands of oysters I’ve shucked in my life, NEVER has one looked back up at me!” [Source] Over on the Water Hill Music Fest site, “Filmmaker (and Ann Arbor native) Ken Burns confirmed today that he and his crew will attend Water Hill Music Fest again this year to continue work on his documentary ‘Dripping With Talent: The Music of Water Hill’.” [Source]

Ann Arbor Transportation Authority special board meeting (April 1, 2011): At a special meeting, announced in advance on March 28, the AATA board voted unanimously to authorize its CEO to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the city of Ann Arbor to construct a bus pullout as part of a bus transfer center on eastbound Washtenaw Avenue, east of Pittsfield Boulevard.

The bus pullout is part of a larger project – a transfer center on the south side of Washtenaw Avenue at Pittsfield Boulevard, opposite Arborland mall – which will include a “super shelter.” The project is being paid for with federal stimulus money granted to the AATA. For now, only a center on the south side is being contemplated, because topographical and right-of-way issues pose challenges on the north side.

The city of Ann Arbor has already conducted the bid, and is preparing to award the construction contract. The city will oversee construction activities on the AATA’s behalf, using funds provided through the AATA. The rationale for the city’s oversight of the project is that the city regularly carries out similar projects, and it’s expected there will be fewer problems and a better final product. At its April 4 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council will vote on awarding a construction contract to Fonson Inc.

The MOU had been discussed at the AATA board’s regular monthly meeting on March 17, but board members were reluctant to vote on it without a final draft of the MOU itself in front of them. That led to the need for a special meeting on April 1.

Construction on the bus pullout is to begin in April and be complete by June of this year.

The need for a transfer center at that Washtenaw Avenue location, of which the bus pullout is a part, stems from the termination in July 2009 of a previous arrangement with Arborland shopping center, which provided for a bus stop and transfer center in the Arborland parking lot. [Full Story]

Added on Friday, April 1 to the Ann Arbor city council’s April 4, 2011 agenda is a resolution that would end discussion on the Valiant Partners proposal to build a hotel and conference center on the so-called Library Lot. The parcel is located just north of the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location on South Fifth Avenue, but is owned by the city of Ann Arbor.

The resolution – sponsored by mayor John Hieftje and councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1) – would reject the letter of intent that was being prepared for consideration by the council at its April 19 meeting. From the resolution: “… City Council has decided not to select any of the proposals made in response to RFP #743, and that the RFP review process for the building site on top of the new parking structure at 319 S. Fifth Avenue that began in August of 2009 is hereby concluded;”

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is currently constructing a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on the parcel. In 2009, the city of Ann Arbor issued a request for proposals for the use of the space above the underground garage. The process of evaluating the six proposals yielded the Valiant Partners proposal as the preferred one.

At a work session on March 14, 2011, the council was presented with a draft letter of intent (LOI) that would have set a four-month timeframe for working out a development agreement with Valiant Partners. A vote on a final draft of the LOI was scheduled for the council’s April 19 meeting, along with a public hearing.

The public hearing and the vote on the LOI would not take place, if the resolution on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda passes. [Previous Chronicle coverage "Library Lot from Top to Bottom"]

At a meeting of the DDA’s bricks and money committee on Wednesday, March 30, Hieftje hinted that he felt the Valiant proposal would not get approval from the council, when he told Sandi Smith (Ward 1), a councilmember and DDA board member, that he thought the space above the underground garage would be used as surface parking for at least the next few years. He was responding to Smith’s concern about the limited net gain of parking spaces that will result from the construction of the underground garage.

Also on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda is an item that would establish a process under which the Ann Arbor DDA would facilitate the development of downtown city-owned surface parking lots, which would not now presumably include the top of the underground parking structure. That so-called parcel-by-parcel plan – somewhat of a misnomer because it envisions the master planning of districts of the downtown, not individual parcels – has been considered by the city council at two previous meetings, but postponed.  [Full Story]

On her blog Relish, Myra Klarman posts photographs she took at luminary-making workshops for FoolMoon, a parade and celebration in downtown Ann Arbor that runs from dusk until midnight on Friday, April 1. She also includes photos taken of puppet-making for the April 3 FestiFools parade, now in its fifth year: “FoolMoon aspires to shimmery, shadowy, mysteriousness (I’m totally curious to experience the vibe of this new event); whereas FestiFools is more bold, blatant, in-broad-daylight.” [Source]

At a Jan. 18, 2011 hearing, the 22nd Circuit Court judge Melinda Morris entertained two motions by the city of Ann Arbor in response to a lawsuit filed by The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

The lawsuit alleged that during a July 19, 2010 session held by the city council, the council had violated the Michigan Open Meetings Act – by voting to enter into a closed session to discuss written attorney-client privileged communication, but instead straying from that narrow purpose to reach a public policy decision about medical marijuana businesses.

It’s uncontroversial that the council did make a decision in an open session on Aug. 5, 2010 to develop an ordinance that would ensconce medical marijuana businesses in local zoning regulations, by first establishing a moratorium on establishing additional medical marijuana businesses. What The Chronicle essentially alleged was that the Aug. 5 decision to develop local legislation on medical marijuana businesses had already been determined at the July 19 closed session.

The first motion by the city of Ann Arbor was rejected by Judge Morris. The city had asked her to find that The Chronicle’s suit was frivolous, not managing even to state a claim, and further asked that sanctions and fines be imposed.

However, on the city’s second motion – which asked Morris to find that there was insufficient evidence of an OMA violation to warrant subjecting councilmembers and the city attorney to depositions, and that she should dismiss the claim – Morris ruled in favor of the city of Ann Arbor.

In reaching the conclusion that additional discovery of facts should not be allowed, Morris appeared to give significant weight to councilmember depositions affidavits, which they all signed, asserting that they had voted to go into the closed session on July 19, 2010 in part to discuss a May 28, 2010 legal advice memo written by the city attorney, Stephen Postema. All the affidavits further asserted that the council had not made any decision during the July 19 closed session. Morris also appeared to give significant weight to the idea that even if an OMA violation occurred on July 19, then it would have been “cured” by the council’s deliberations and decision made during their open session at the Aug. 5, 2010 meeting.

In this report, we will review some points of legal interpretation on which we disagree with Judge Morris, including the significance of a surprising omission in the affidavits signed by the city attorney and the mayor.

But we begin with the observation that since being served The Chronicle’s lawsuit six months ago – about a closed session conducted on the claimed basis of attorney-client privilege – the city council has not held a single closed session of that kind. That’s easily the longest closed-session-free span the council has achieved for attorney-client privileged-based sessions in more than two years.

That seems to reflect an implicit acknowledgment by the city attorney and the council that they’d been holding more of these kinds of closed sessions than were actually warranted. We gave serious consideration to filing an appeal in this case. The council’s apparent change in behavior has convinced us that our decision not to allocate additional financial resources to an appeal was the right one. Part of our goal was to rectify a specific pattern of inappropriate behavior on the council’s part, and we appear to have achieved that.

Compared to the possibility of establishing new case law on a specific point, we think a more general approach to reform of the Michigan Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act, through legislative efforts, is likely to yield stronger and longer-lasting improvements in these open government laws. [Full Story]