AAPD to Hold Trio of Neighborhood Watch Community Meetings
Ann Arbor Independent Editorial Team
At its Feb. 21, 2017 meeting, Council members voted to allocate $200,000 to hire Chicago-based consulting firm Hillard Heintze LLC to conduct an independent review of the city's police department. The…
ADP Cutting Jobs, Closing Ann Arbor Office
Automatic Data Processing LLC is cutting 16 additional positions, after announcing in September that it would let go about 79 employees as it closed its Ann Arbor office.
The facility at 175 Jackson Plaza will close around March 30,…
City Vendor Records Reveal Handful of Board/Commission Members Paid $1.33M
by Patricia Lesko
NextDoor is a city-wide listserv where neighbors can post everything from requests for babysitters to football tickets for sale. Neighbors have also taken to posting information about local city government. In Feb.…
Why Are Black People in Ypsilanti Disproportionately Arrested on Bench Warrants?
Part 1: Data Trends
Black men and women in Ypsilanti accounted for 63% (1,179 of 1,869) of all Washtenaw County arrests in 2014 on “failure to appear” bench warrants, even though they make up less than 2% of the county’s total…
Southern Poverty Law Center Adds Ann Arbor Synagogue Protest Group to Hate Group List
The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report on Feb. 23 on hate groups in the U.S.
SPLC data reveal there are now more than 1,000 hate groups around the country, the first time the SPLC has seen the number of "hate groups" top 1,000…
OP-ED: Millennials With No Home of Their Own
by Suzanne Fields
EVERY GENERATION confronts its own obstacles. My parents eloped because they couldn’t afford to get married, and they hid the nuptials from their families for a year. They finally bought a big bed and moved it into the…
Washtenaw Among Least Vulnerable Counties Should ACA Be Repealed
by Nancy Derringer
Hundreds of thousands of state residents would likely be affected by a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including those in counties that went hard for the law’s critic-in-chief, President-Elect Donald Trump,…
Former School Board Member Vs. Superintendent on Annexation Question
Bob Rorke is a member of AAPS Superintendent Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift's Blue Ribbon Commission. He is a former member of the Board of Education who stepped down in 2003. Rorke is concerned about the proposed annexation of the Whitmore Lake…
The U-M Athletic Dept., Revised
by Brian Cook
THIS IS AN alternate vision of the U-M Athletic Department. First some base principles:
Michigan isn’t leaving the conference and has to work within the confines of the new Big Ten. If this was “conference commissioner…
Sierra Club Endorses Anglin, Eaton, and Kunselman for Ann Arbor City Council
The Sierra Club, Huron Valley Group, and Sierra Club, Michigan Chapter today formally announced several endorsements of incumbent City Council members, each facing challengers in the Democratic primary in August.
"We are very pleased to…