ANTRIM
Parade brings community together
ALDEN -- Pride welled in Ralph Ross' voice as he gestured to the dozens of people lining the short stretch of road that winds through town.
Spectators clapped, waved and cheered under brilliant blue skies Monday afternoon as veterans' groups, shiny red fire trucks, the local Boy Scout troop and others in the Alden Memorial Day parade slowly passed.
In Alden, Ross said, such things aren't taken lightly.
"These parades mean something to people," Ross, 78, said. "It's unity -- we worship together, we have parades together, we live together. Look at those seniors; look at the smiles on their faces. That's different than if they just sat at home and watched TV."
Alden, which hugs the shores of scenic Torch Lake, looked the part of a red-white-and-blue small town in the hours leading up to the parade. Flags stuck from flower pots and fence posts, fire crews worked to clean their rigs and the marching band from nearby Mancelona High School performed.
GRAND TRAVERSE
Houlihan wants part-time, $72K job
TRAVERSE CITY -- Local attorney Michael Houlihan, a key player in the formation and construction of Grand Traverse County's troubled septage treatment plant, wants a part-time, $72,000 contract for a year to help a new attorney ease into his job.
Houlihan was instrumental in devising septage flow numbers that helped convince local officials build the $8 million plant, and then served as project manager for a badly flawed construction project.
He's been a lightning rod for critics of a plant that's on course to lose millions of dollars over the next few years, and in March said he'd retire as legal representative for the county's Board of Public Works, a post he held for 32 years.
Houlihan's proposal, supported by county Administrator Dennis Aloia, is to work two days a week on county sewer and water issues for $6,000 a month. The county would provide him an office and clerical assistance.
The idea leaves some county officials shaking their heads.
"I would hope nobody is taking this seriously," said county Commissioner Ross Richardson. "Usually, when people resign they leave. (Houlihan) resigned three months ago and I'm surprised he's still here."
Student disputes TCAPS on Rush call
TRAVERSE CITY -- A Traverse City high school student disputes findings and statements by school leaders who probed comments he made about a teacher to a conservative national radio host.
But a classmate contends in an e-mail sent to administrators that Mitchell Harrison's on-air description doesn't truthfully depict what happened that day.
It's a debate that surfaced a month ago with a phone call to radio host Rush Limbaugh, a case considered closed despite students' contradicting stories.
Harrison, a senior at West Senior High, called Limbaugh's program after a video production class April 30 and reported that his teacher reprimanded him for 10 minutes in front of classmates for reading Fox News' Web site, according to a transcript.
Harrison, 18, said he was told he was "only allowed to read BBC and stuff of that nature," the transcript from Limbaugh's show states.
Traverse City Area Public Schools administrators investigated and took no action against the teacher, Charles Rennie. A week after the incident, Superintendent James Feil told the Record-Eagle the matter was resolved and "the short end of this is, as it's been reported, it's not true."
Teen BB gun vandal sentenced
TRAVERSE CITY -- Kyle Leiter doesn't want to be remembered as the mastermind.
Leiter and his attorney told Circuit Judge Philip E. Rodgers he was involved in only three days of a lengthy window-shooting spree that authorities said racked up more than $50,000 in damage in and around Traverse City late last year.
And Leiter, 17, said he merely drove a vehicle while his friends, Stephen Pina and Tyler Briegel, popped off round after round from high-powered BB pistols at area windows.
But Rodgers said he wasn't much concerned with Leiter's specific role. More significant, he said, was Leiter's decision to repeatedly involve himself in the activity.
"I'll give you the first night," Rodgers said Friday. "The problem I'm having is with nights two and three, where you had an opportunity to reflect ... why are you in the car on nights two and three?"
Leiter's attorney, David Clark, characterized the group's conduct as "punkish, foolish behavior that got out of control."
TC officials push smoking restrictions
TRAVERSE CITY -- Traverse City leaders hope a new push will help them extinguish smoking in bars and restaurants.
State Rep. Gary McDowell, D-Rudyard, agreed to sponsor a bill in the Michigan Legislature to allow local control of smoking in bars and restaurants. It would give local officials the authority to ban smoking in such places and could spur legislators in Lansing to enact a statewide ban, McDowell said.
"This would allow local units of government to go ahead and make this decision themselves, rather than waiting on Lansing. It's a long process and I'm not sure we can get it done on a state level," he said.
Traverse City officials sought McDowell's help because the local state representative, Wayne Schmidt, R-Traverse City, opposes the idea and said smoking rules should be set by business and property owners.
McDowell intends to introduce the bill next week and seek co-sponsors. The bill could get a leg up in Lansing over a statewide ban because many legislators support local control on certain topics, he said.
"I feel we need a statewide ban and I think this would snowball across the state," McDowell said.
Board mulls Whiting Hotel bond
TRAVERSE CITY -- Grand Traverse County will use its borrowing power to help private developers build affordable housing, starting with the downtown Whiting Hotel project.
The county board voted 5 to 3 to approve risking approximately $1.6 million in principal and interest payments over 27 years to help developer Gene LaFave purchase and restore the Whiting Hotel on Front Street.
The $6.5 million project is intended to restore the 1893 building's exterior to its original look, make it energy efficient and create up to 27 affordable and 11 low-income apartments for downtown workers.
The county's land bank authority will sell $800,000 worth of bonds and pay them back over 27 years by capturing all school taxes on the property. Interest will add another $800,000 to the cost.
"It's an expensive project and a large commitment of public dollars," said county Commissioner Addison Wheelock Jr. "The fact remains if we have a commitment to provide affordable housing in our downtown area, it's going to take a commitment of public money, because there's no developer in the world who's going to come in and spend that kind of money and rent (apartments) for $500."
Some commissioners opposed to the county's financial involvement accused project proponents of having "mis-catagorized" finances by listing $937,000 in federal historic tax credits as private, not public funding.
State gives schools 'green' status
TRAVERSE CITY -- The white buckets seemed to be about half her size, but Annie Hessler managed to hoist them both to her shoulders. They still were too heavy. She shifted beneath their weight.
"Steve, will you get one of these?" she called out.
Steve Maas, a physical education teacher at The Children's House, turned and lifted one from Annie's hands.
Annie, 8, leaned over a pen full of what looked like black mulch and overturned one of the buckets.
It may be messy, but the waste piles won't end up in a landfill. Students at the private Montessori elementary school, across the street from Traverse City West Senior High in Garfield Township, this year began to compost leftover food for use in their gardens.
The lessons in environmentalism are part of a schoolwide effort to become more ecologically conscious, an initiative that gained recent traction when The Children's House was awarded state "green school" status.
Rapid City Elementary, of Kalkaska Public Schools, Mancelona Elementary and Mancelona Middle School share the honor.
Local speller aces stage test
TRAVERSE CITY -- Onstage, Lukas Blakkan-Esser appeared composed.
He had studied both of the words he received in the preliminary rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., so he had no trouble with the letters.
Yet even after acing "partiality" and "syncranterian" Wednesday -- the latter word meaning "having teeth in a continuous row" -- Lukas, 14, still had to play the waiting game.
Despite having no trouble on the big stage, the eighth-grader from Traverse City West Middle School didn't score high enough on a written test this week to advance to today's semifinals. He earned 15 of 25 possible points on the test.
He's taking it in stride.
"At least I did well in front of everybody," said Lukas, who was one of 12 spellers from Michigan to compete.
BPW OKs septage plant investigation
TRAVERSE CITY -- Glen Lile spent the holiday weekend fretting over ongoing problems at Grand Traverse County's septage treatment plant.
On Tuesday, East Bay Township's supervisor pulled the trigger on the only solution he could come up with to resolve costly, contentious and long-standing woes at the $8 million facility.
A divided county Board of Public Works approved Lile's proposal to launch an independent investigation to determine if the county should seek monetary damages over the septage plant's myriad design and construction flaws.
"This thing has been kind of a thorn in our side since Day 1 ... it's kind of divided us," Lile said of the township and county officials involved in plant oversight.
The board agreed to hire a third-party attorney and engineers to investigate whether any lawyers, engineers, project managers or other county-paid consultants "engaged in conduct that gives rise to a claim for monetary damages" during septage plant development. The facility opened in 2005, but has been beset by a series of operational and budgetary problems ever since.
The public works board needs to investigate the plant's development background, as well as septage flow estimates that were used to determine its size, scope and price tag, Lile said. Local officials can't ask the public to sink more money into the facility to make it financially viable without resolving those questions, he said.
Talks continue into ninth month
TRAVERSE CITY -- Negotiations between teachers and administrators in Traverse City Area Public Schools have not yet yielded an agreement, almost nine months since the previous contract expired.
Members of the Traverse City Education Association, which represents about 650 teachers, counselors, social workers and nurses, have worked under terms of a one-year deal that took effect in September 2007.
Both sides met this week for the first time since March. No new meeting date has been set.
Union President John Scrudato would not comment on the meeting's tone or outcome, saying his members still are willing to talk.
"I just have a feeling that people aren't content," he said. "I think they're basically at their wit's end."
A district memo dated March 5 and signed by Christine Davis, the district's executive director of human resources, includes details of both sides' proposals from Feb. 16 and March 4 sessions.
