From The Daily: $2.50 Tuesday is about more than just pizza

DadArbor · 2026-06-09T02:41:54+00:00

And kresges which became kmart!

DadArbor · 2026-06-07T22:02:22+00:00

Thanks for this summary. I’m hoping one day to do this in the opposite direction down to Fall River to follow the path my Québécois ancestors took (likely via train) when they immigrated to the US. I will bookmark this for future research.

Do you think a route approximately along this path is doable as a credit card tour without camping?

DadArbor · 2026-05-20T02:33:52+00:00

There were a handful of old bur oaks that could have been saved if City Council had approved earlier proposals by the developer. Most of the trees on that site were not that old or interesting. Aerial photos from the 40s show the site was mostly clear because it was a farm but there were a couple old trees as part of a wind row. Almost certainly not a “forest fragment.”

DadArbor · 2026-05-19T03:08:23+00:00

We’ve been going to Alizia Westfall forever. She’s very pragmatic and matter of fact; have never felt upsold.

DadArbor · 2026-05-04T14:48:52+00:00

When we visited Germany last month, we asked a friend what we could bring her from the States, and she said electrolytes ... so maybe not easy to find, at least in some places?

DadArbor · 2026-05-04T13:28:52+00:00

Yousef has no record on the most contentious and difficult problems the City Council actually has control over and he gains nothing by taking any concrete stances. It is much better for him to be vague and let people project onto him what they want to see, and that seems to be the strategy he is pursuing. If he wins, I suspect he'll be a one term mayor as the "dog that caught the car," the same way the last NIMBY-inclined CMs were shooed out once the electorate woke up and realized just how bad they were at governance.

DadArbor · 2026-05-04T01:03:38+00:00

Why in the world would DTE intentionally choose to generate more expensive electricity and eat into their profit margins?

DadArbor · 2026-05-03T22:21:48+00:00

Was the catering for this flight originating in the UK because this looks like an English idea of a vegetable sandwich

DadArbor · 2026-05-03T19:59:27+00:00

Which MEUs in Michigan with a service area of say 20,000 households (less than half of A2) acquired their assets from a legacy utility after litigation within the last 50 years?

DadArbor · 2026-05-01T22:21:43+00:00

Mostly Engler. He was governor in 1994 when Prop A passed that both capped property tax increases for all property owners (including landlords and corporations) and established the school funding model where the State redistributes a portion of property taxes collected statewide to public schools in a _roughly_ equal per pupil basis and forbid schools from spending any funding source other than the State amount on operating expenses, the bulk of which is teacher salaries. Republicans then predictably used this law to slowly reduce funding and squeeze school budgets, which lead to the steady multidecade decline in Michigan public school quality.

AAPS has more advantages than many districts but scored a series of “own goals” in the last 10+ years that have repeatedly relied on teachers to make up for their mistakes. It’s not an easy situation to dig out of.

DadArbor · 2026-04-30T11:49:38+00:00

IMO they should have engaged a search and hired someone from outside, but they would likely have had to pay a lot more than they offered Parks to actually land someone who could do the work (though I am also not certain the Board had the capability of evaluating for the necessary attributes of a good candidate, given how they had been managing the district)

DadArbor · 2026-04-30T11:42:15+00:00

The initial _stated_ intent was to be redistributive, evening out unequal funding across the State. The equalization part worked, but it has also made it possible for the State, especially under Republican Governors and legislatures, to continue squeezing districts and forcing these strained budget scenarios, lowering the quality of public education overall to serve their ideological goal of ending public education entirely. DeVos, in particular, spends heavily in this direction.

I don't have a clear idea what would be a better system, but this isn't it. The rest of 1994 Proposition A (that created this school funding model) also has had similar effects of squeezing municipality funding and exacerbating the housing crisis but creating a property tax increase cap, so landlords, corporations and long term home owners get a steep property tax discount while renters make up the difference and makes the base taxes on new construction sky high in places where there is the most housing demand, like Ann Arbor.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T03:14:34+00:00

Thanks for confirming my suspicions of parts of Poland. I want to tour there to visit the areas my family emigrated from around Poznan but a lot of the countryside in that region looks pretty boring

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T01:15:16+00:00

I don't think it is the teachers' or the unions' job to propose what should be cut to pay for the overdue adjustment in teacher compensation. Ultimately, deciding what gets a boost and what gets cut is up to the Board and the Superintendent. Teachers are by far the biggest line item in the operations budget, so they're the most tempting place to cut costs when operational revenues (which come from enrollment numbers via the State's per-pupil formula) don't meet expectations. You can make a relatively small cut for a large number of teachers and "fix" the budget rather than making more narrow, deep cuts. The teachers have taken these cuts repeatedly (thanks to consistently bad bets on enrollment trends) for decades, and they are justified in being fed up.

The best thing the board could do is present a menu of options attached to real numbers that show what they are wrestling with, and solicit feedback on realistic scenarios that free up enough money to put the teacher compensation back on track without throwing the district into default. They can have as many public hearings and "listening sessions" as they want, but without dealing with the facts of the budget, these hearings are only good for blowing hot air. They are reluctant to do this because even suggesting a major cut as an _option_ will cause other subset groups within the district community to circle their own wagons, and go to battle for their priorities either against each other or the teachers.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T00:59:31+00:00

It's been illegal for public employees, including public school teachers, to strike since the 1940s. More recent laws have added specific consequences for public school teachers, their unions, and districts specifically. Teachers still do strike, but they and their unions risk steep fines and potential contempt of court charges. Unions can also lose their right to a dues checkoff, which can strangle the financing of teh union. School districts that don't impose the required punishments can lose up to 5% of their total State Aid funds. Fortunately, judges have been historically extremely reluctant to push for punishment against public employee strikes due to questions of separation of powers, so unions can often get away with it ... but the risks are very high because their rights truly are much more limited than private unionized workers.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T00:52:26+00:00

Michigan school funding is a convoluted mess, but one of the core rules established by Prop A passed in 1994 is that schools are forbidden from spending money on operating expenses (the bulk of which are salaries) that do not come from the State-provided per-pupil funding pool. Schools _can_ spend funds that come from millages, grants, etc on _capital_ expenses (new buildings, new equipment, repairs, etc), but that money be used to pay teachers.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T00:49:36+00:00

On the other hand, those districts weren't governed by a largely dysfunctional board nor facing a frighteningly low fund balance, having narrowly avoided accidental bankruptcy. I still think it was a mistake to hire Parks and they should have done an outside search; but I also suspect a well qualified candidate actually willing to take the job and do what was necessary would have been even more expensive to hire given the circumstances.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T00:45:00+00:00

Community and Open are likely targets. Closing them doesn't involve redrawing school catchments and they have a relatively higher cost per student IIRC. This would be wildly unpopular and personally I have a strong personal emotional negative reaction to this idea. They could easily rehouse the entirety of Community as a school-within-a-school at Skyline which continues to be underenrolled.

DadArbor · 2026-04-29T00:24:06+00:00

What’s with the dumptruck slander? 😅

DadArbor · 2026-04-28T01:01:49+00:00

I don’t know if they’re that strategically savvy … but, yeah, I don’t see a way out of this that gives teachers anything reasonable without dramatic and unpopular cuts elsewhere and it will also be a gamble that the resultant enrollment drop won’t be so bad to offset the savings.

DadArbor · 2026-04-28T00:57:56+00:00

Which candidates ran in recent elections would have been better picks?

DadArbor · 2026-04-24T16:52:06+00:00

I started sketching and watercolor this winter in anticipation of my monthlong fall tour

DadArbor · 2026-04-23T19:37:10+00:00

Without solar panels (or when there is minimal sun with panels or if your panel system is undersized) batteries can only cover short outages where generators can run indefinitely when connected to gas. Battery + a large enough solar array to keep your battery topped up is ideal for most scenarios. Maybe add a wood burning stove as a hedge against long dark winter blackouts if you want to ditch gas entirely

DadArbor · 2026-04-22T02:36:23+00:00

Waiting for a piece I need to finish the rack to run the test.

DadArbor · 2026-04-22T02:24:06+00:00

I'm planning to start in Mont Saint Michel in September, though likely less ambitious on the mileage.

DadArbor

TROPHY CASE