by P.D. Lesko Usually, employees get fired for filching money or abusing an employer-issued credit card. Except in Ann Arbor. Auditors past and present, in fact, have sent the city's Audit Committee letters of warning about sloppy…

John Hieftje and his political pals have a reputation of ignoring public opinion. Perhaps the most egregious example was a 2008 Council meeting at which petitions with 6,000 signatures were presented to Council to urge them to put the…

BETWEEN 2010 AND 2012, Berkeley, California, Walpole, Massachusetts, Auburn, Maine, and Concord, New Hampshire, among other U.S. cities voted not to adopt single-stream recycling, or abandoned single-stream recycling, according to a 2012…

We begin with a fairytale: Once Upon A Time there were five Ann Arbor City Council members named Sandi Smith, Carsten Hohnke, Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski. They all unquestioningly supported Ann Arbor's Percent for…

by P.D. Lesko On November 6, 2012 the firmament trembled in Ann Arbor—the political landscape opened up and swallowed local politicos and their monied donors whole, casting the owner of Main Street Ventures, members of the Downtown…

Ward 1 City Council member Sabra Briere recently voted to kill a resolution intended to protect parkland from de facto sale through leasing—a strategy being used by John Hieftje and his Council pals to try to "repurpose" a several acre…

By P.D. Lesko In 2007, Ann Arbor City Council passed the Public Art Ordinance that sets aside one percent of funds from all public construction budgets for art projects — to a maximum of $250,000 per project. On the City of Ann Arbor web…

by P.D. Lesko The meeting room at the Traverwood Library is modern, with plenty of light and clean lines. The room was full, with about 70 people in attendance to hear the candidates answer questions for 90 minutes. It was there that Ward…

by P.D. Lesko Ward 5 City Council candidate Chuck Warpehoski is being endorsed by many members of the local Dem Klan, including John Hieftje, whose 2010 Facebook page described him as "Ann Arbor's popular mayor." The Warpehoski race is a…

by P.D. Lesko Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm is small, perhaps a little over 5 feet tall on a good day, but her desire to openly and diligently serve the people of Ann Arbor is gigantic. On AnnArbor.com, reporting about Lumm's work on…