City Hall At Night

$4.4 Million

Ann Arbor's city hall, also known as the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building, will not be getting a $4.4 million exterior makeover anytime soon, the City Council has decided. Read the story.

Paint By Numbers

As the Ann Arbor City Council prepares to cast a final vote in two weeks to remove roughly $820,000 in unspent dollars from the city's public art fund, council members are stressing what they're doing shouldn't be viewed as an attack on art. Read the story.

That's gold, Jerry! GOLD!

Ann Arbor's recently renovated and expanded city hall at 301 E. Huron St. has been awarded Gold LEED status by the U.S. Green Building Council. Read the story.

Vote Early, Vote Often

Michigan doesn't have true early voting, but a steady stream of absentee voters have been making their way to city hall to cast ballots in recent days. The Ann Arbor clerk's office has set up special absentee voting booths in the hallway outside its second-floor offices to accommodate the strong demand. City Clerk Jackie Beaudry said her office issued 12,971 absentee ballots as of 5 p.m. Thursday and 8,423 (65 percent) had been returned with four days left to go. Read the story.

One Year On The Job

If only Steve Powers chose school administration as a career, then we might be able to call him Super Powers. Alas, he chose municipal government work, so "City Administrator Steve Powers" will have to do. Powers started on the job almost exactly a year ago, arriving in Ann Arbor by way of Marquette County where he served as county administrator for 15 years. Now that he has a full year under his belt, the Illinois native sat down with me on Thursday to talk about his first year's experience. Read the Q&A.

Knock On Bronze

The $750,000 Herbert Dreiseitl water sculpture in front of Ann Arbor's city hall. Some days it works and water flows. Some days it doesn't. Contractor Jim Fackert has been working out the bugs. Read the story.

When It Rains

A Brighton-based contractor who had a hand in creating parts of the new art installation in front of Ann Arbor's city hall works to fix a few bugs with the circuit boxes to the blue glass orbs tonight. It was working over the weekend, with stormwater running and everything. Proof it works.

Chief Of Police

Barnett Jones came to Ann Arbor in June 2006 with 30 years of law enforcement experience, beginning as a Wayne County sheriff’s deputy and also working for the Inkster Police Department and Oakland County Sheriff’s Department before becoming the police chief in Sterling Heights. In Ann Arbor, he oversees a department that has continued to face tough budget cuts.

Art In Public Places

A German artist's bronze sculpture — a $750,000 public art installation paid for by the city — finally was installed in front of Ann Arbor's city hall today. The artwork — planned as the centerpiece of the LEED Gold building — starts close to Huron Street and follows the west edge of a new rain garden toward the main entrance of city hall. The focal point is a standing bronze sculpture with blue glass pearls that light up in computerized variations as stormwater circulates over the sculpture's surface. Read the story.

Six Floors Up

Work continues in the plaza area in front of Ann Arbor's city hall where a German artist's sculpture is expected to be installed in the next month. The $750,000 piece is expected to start close to Huron Street and follow the west edge of a new rain garden toward the main entrance of city hall. The focal point of the piece is a standing bronze sculpture with blue glass pearls that light up in computerized variations as stormwater from the building circulates over the sculpture's surface. Nearly four years since the launch of Ann Arbor's Percent For Art Program, more than $2.2 million in city funds have been channeled toward public art. City officials are now questioning the program's effectiveness. Read the story.

Cool Ranch

Slouched in a blue folding chair in front of Ann Arbor's city hall, James Brinker has all he needs for the moment: a copy of High Times magazine, a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, a 16-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and an Android cell phone loaded with rock tunes. An associate of a proposed medical marijuana dispensary on Packard Road, Brinker has been camped out in front of city hall since Monday night. He has slept the last five nights curled up with a blanket in his chair, using an umbrella to shield him from the elements on what has turned out to be a rainy week. "It sucks being out here," he admitted on Friday afternoon. "But I'll sit out here as long as I have to — this is my livelihood I'm talking about." Read the story.

Bad Dream

When gunshots rang out near the Dream Nite Club last month, Ann Arbor Police Officer Brad Rougeau, far left, was already on the scene — and he risked his life to catch the shooter. Two days later, he received a pink slip from the city and was told he'd be losing his job effective July 1 due to city budget cutbacks. Read the story.

Pension Politics

Ann Arbor City Council Member Christopher Taylor, left, brought forward a resolution Monday night that seeks to address retiree pension and health care costs. Council Member Stephen Kunselman, right, had questions about the proposal. Read the story here.

Darth Postema Must Go

Medical marijuana dispensary owner Chuck Ream holds a sign calling for the firing of Ann Arbor City Attorney Stephen Postema outside city hall. Ream has been at odds with Postema over the details of the city's pending medical marijuana ordinances. Ann Arbor City Council members have decided they no longer want to make grow operations apply for licenses. Read the story here.

Something Old, Something New

The new police-courts building now stands adjacent to the 1963-era city hall building in downtown Ann Arbor. The official name of the new building is the Ann Arbor Justice Center. City hall will continue to be called the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building. Both buildings will be referred to collectively as the Ann Arbor Municipal Center.

And Justice For All

Ann Arbor officials recently invited the public to tour the city's new police-courts building, which officially opened in January at the corner of Fifth and Huron. The nearly $50 million, five-story addition to city hall was constructed by Lansing-based Clark Construction Co. It was designed by Quinn Evans Architects of Ann Arbor. Read the story here.

Belly Of The Beast

Radon levels far above amounts posing cancer risks plagued the basement of Ann Arbor's city hall where police officers worked for many years, city records show. Top city officials were aware of the problems, but measures taken — including a mitigation system installed in the 1990s — failed to keep radon below federal safety levels, and it wasn't until 2009 that the city moved employees out of the basement. Members of the police officers union believe there may be a link between the radon in the air they breathed in the basement offices — along with asbestos and mold issues — and health problems experienced by several officers, including two recent deaths. Vada Murray, 43, a police officer in Ann Arbor for two decades and a former defensive back for the University of Michigan football team, died April 6 two and a half years after a lung cancer diagnosis. He never smoked. Read the story here.

99 Percent Done

The first tenants of Ann Arbor's police-courts building have moved into their new digs, and dozens more are scheduled to make the transition in the coming weeks. The city's information technology staff is now up and running with a new data center on the first floor of the city hall addition. And a handful of police department employees have moved in on the second and third floors, including the police chief, deputy chiefs and other top brass. The courts staff will move into floors four and five in January. The building formally known as the Ann Arbor Municipal Center is "99 percent done" after 20 months of construction, according to Bill Wheeler, a city engineer who retired in May but remains under contract to oversee the project until its completion. Read the story here.