The Ann Arbor Independent - A locally owned newspaper in Ann Arbor

The end of the year-round Pell Grant program is here. During the 2010-2011 academic year, the Pell Grant award maximum per student was $5,500. In the 2008 academic year, it is estimated that the average Pell Grant awarded was $2,770, which…

by Chris Savage This past Sunday I got an unexpected call with an offer to purchase tickets to the East Lansing stop of U2's 360° tour later that evening. The show was a rescheduling of the original tour which had been postponed because…

Representative Jeff Irwin, a Democrat, served for a decade as a Washtenaw County Commissioner. In January 2011, he began his first term in the Michigan House of Representatives. In his regular column, House Calls, A2Politico will pose a…

You have to wonder: Did the Reverend Jesse Jackson submit his op-ed piece to either The Detroit News or the Freep before he shot it off to the editors of the Chicago Sun-Times? Did the editors of those two Michigan papers take one look at…

In 2004, John Hieftje appointed a Blue Ribbon Panel to study potential changes to the city's employee pension system. Among the recommendations, was the restructuring of the Board of Trustees to remove city managers and employees. In…

by Betsy McMillin I was mulling over what topic to write about next. Then my phone rang; I ignored it.  It rang again.  And again. And again. I had my topic. According to an April 16, 2011 piece by April Conger for ABC News: Data from…

A2Politico has been tracking the approval ratings of Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder. In November 2010, Rick Snyder breezed past Democratic candidate Virg Bernero, and won the race for governor with 58 percent of the vote. After…

Ann Arbor's Project Grow is an extremely popular and often over-subscribed program under the auspices of which gardeners without the space (or who may want more space) can pay a fee to have their own little slice of black to grow gardens…

by Chris Savage As I have written about before, the Emergency Manager (EM) law in Michigan, now known as Public Act 4 of 2011 (or, more formally the "Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act"), gave sweeping new…

by Erika McNamara In November, Hawaii will be the host of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. This summit has been a long time in coming since the last time the event was in the United States was in 1993. This is good for…