GRAND TRAVERSE
NMC raises staff and faculty salaries by 2.5%
TRAVERSE CITY — Staff and faculty at Northwestern Michigan College will see a 2.5 percent bump in salaries despite concerns by some on the college board that such a raise is insensitive to the economic plight of others in the community.
In a 4-3 vote Monday, NMC's board approved a budget for 2011-12 that raises salaries while increasing tuition for in-district students by 3 percent. Out-ofdistrict students will pay 5 percent more next year.
The dissenters — board Chairman Bob Brick, Cheryl Gore Follette and Susan Sheldon — wanted to limit raises to 1.5 percent while keeping the proposed tuition increases the same.
Sheldon made a motion for a 1.5 percent pay raise instead, which was defeated in a 4-3 vote. She said a 2.5 percent raise wasn't reasonable based on conversations she had with people in the community.
"Most are employed, but they haven't received increases in salaries. Those that have, it's been zero to 2 percent," she said. "Just because we have it doesn't mean we should spend it." Follette said she spoke with a doctor at Munson who had to negotiate for a pay freeze rather than a 3 percent salary decrease.
"It's very difficult. This is reality. In the college, we don't operate in reality when everyone gets raises," she said.
Schwander bound over in slaying
TRAVERSE CITY — Susie Lewis knew very little about how her daughter died. Then came Monday.
Lewis sat in the back row of an 86th District courtroom and listened to a forensic pathologist testify that her daughter Carly, 16, died of a deep stab wound to her left upper chest.
It was one of 10 stab wounds she suffered, according to a June 16 autopsy, Dr. Stephen Cohle said Monday during a preliminary examination for the slaying suspect, Robert Jensen Schwander.
Testimony from Cohle and Traverse City police Detective Sgt. Joseph McCarthy was enough to prompt Judge Mike Stepka to bind Schwander, 17, over to 13th Circuit Court on an open count of murder. The case is set for trial, with a pretrial conference scheduled for July 8 in Traverse City.
Dozens of people packed the courtroom as Schwander appeared in public for the first time since his June 14 arrest. The shaggy-haired teen entered the courtroom in a dark sport coat, his family seated behind him.
Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Alan Schneider called Cohle as his first witness. Cohle testified by telephone about the locations of Carly's 10 stab wounds, including three to the left side of her face.
Big Lots heading to Cherryland Center
TRAVERSE CITY — A Garfield Township shopping mall that recently lost one of its anchor stores will gain a new tenant.
Close-out retailer Big Lots will be moving into the former Tom's Food Market in the Cherryland Center.
Big Lots, a Columbus, Ohio-based national closeout retailer, will move into the former Tom's Food Market space at the Cherryland Center mall at 1144 South Airport Road.
Company officials expect the store to open in late September as part of Big Lots' aggressive expansion effort that includes six new stores in Michigan this year among 90 across the country.
Big Lots offers closeout, brand-name merchandise from a variety of national retailers, including furniture, electronics, home items, toys and groceries. It operates almost 1,400 stores around the U.S. and generated more than $4.5 billion in sales last year.
It's also opening a store in Cadillac in early August, and in Kentwood in late July.
Big Lots will take over the Cherryland Center mall's west anchor space. Tom's Food Market vacated the site last fall, when the local grocery store chain said it was "no longer economically feasible" to run the store, which had been there since November 1986.
Munson works through communications failure
TRAVERSE CITY — Munson Healthcare officials are trying to figure out how to avoid a repeat of a four-plus-hour data systems crash and "resultant chaos" that gripped local hospitals and clinics this week.
A system failure Tuesday morning shut down computers, telephones, pagers and other telecommunications systems at Munson Medical Center and its Munson Healthcare affiliates in Frankfort and Kalkaska, an incident that administrators described as "unacceptable."
The systems failure at Munson and other medical sites occurred when Traverse City Light & Power crews, as planned and scheduled, severed a fiber optic line during utility work near Hagerty Insurance's compound in Traverse City.
Munson officials still aren't sure why a back-up fiber optic circuit failed during a planned outage that started Tuesday at 7:30 a.m., and said their technical staff and outside consultants are trying to determine what happened.
"You can rest assured we're looking very carefully at that," Munson Medical Center CEO Kathleen McManus said. "Of course, we need to know what happened."
McManus said no patients were adversely affected during the outage that wasn't fully rectified until after noon on Tuesday, a stretch of more than 4.5 hours.
Munson's data system runs on two high-speed fiber optic circuits connected to Traverse City Light & Power. Light & Power executive director Ed Rice said utility crews cut one of two fiber optic loops that serve Munson as part of a project near Hagerty's expansion in Old Town.
Petitions could force city referendum
TRAVERSE CITY — City voters likely will have the final say on a contentious local ordinance that protects gays from discrimination in housing, employment and other areas.
City commissioners adopted an anti-discrimination ordinance in October, but opponents on Wednesday filed referendum petitions. If the petitions have enough valid signatures and commissioners refuse to repeal the ordinance, voters will get a chance to approve or reject it during the November general election.
"We're fighting the agenda," said Paul Nepote, a vocal ordinance opponent who believes it's being pushed by what he said are gay rights extremists. "We're not trying to keep anyone from finding a place to live or finding a job."
The city clerk's office has 10 days to certify that the signatures are valid and from city residents. Opponents will need 482 valid signatures, a number based on 25 percent of the total vote count of the highest vote-getter in the last election.
The ordinance, among other things, bans employers from discriminating against or firing employees because of their sexual orientation. It also prohibits landlords and housing facilities from turning away renters based on their sexuality alone.
'College-ready' scores lag on students' tests
TRAVERSE CITY — High school juniors across the five-county region continue to outpace their counterparts throughout the state on standardized tests, but local students lag behind the nation when it comes to college-readiness.
Results from the Michigan Merit Exam released last week show 11th-graders in the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District performed better than the state average in all areas — reading, writing, math, science and social studies.
But only 20 percent were considered "college-ready" in all four subject areas of the ACT, which is included in the test.
"One thing we need to continue to focus on is the overall composite of collegeready percentages," said Stephen Cousins, superintendent of Traverse City Area Public Schools, which is part of the TBAISD.
The Michigan Merit Exam is given annually to juniors. It replaced the high school MEAP test in 2007, and includes a national ACT college entrance test.
Traditionally, only college-bound students elected to take the ACT, but in Michigan, all 11th-graders take the test.
'Dr. Beach' names his top spots on the Lakes
GLEN HAVEN — A gentle breeze ripples Lake Michigan's deep blue surface as a gull circles lazily overhead. The sun is bright, the temperature is a comfy 70 degrees and the view of the water and the distant Manitou Islands is spectacular. The beach is wide and sandy — and almost deserted.
Only a couple dozen people are in sight along a half-mile stretch of lakefront in the heart of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan's northwestern Lower Peninsula. This is shortly before the July Fourth weekend, when tourist season kicks into high gear. Partly because of this splendid isolation just a short drive from a busy resort town, Florida International University Professor Stephen Leatherman — nicknamed "Dr. Beach" — has awarded Sleeping Bear Dunes the top ranking in his initial survey of Great Lakes beaches.
For the past 21 years, Leatherman has released widely followed listings of the nation's top 10 beaches, based on extensive criteria that range from sand texture to water quality to facilities. But his list has always been limited to ocean beaches. After getting thousands of emails over the years from their indignant devotees, Leatherman relented.
After Sleeping Bear Dunes, the top Great Lakes beach spots were: Lake Erie's Presque Isle State Park in Pennsylvania, No. 2; Lake Superior's Sand Point Beach at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan, No. 3; Lake Huron's Bayfield Main Beach in Ontario, Canada, No. 4; and Lake Michigan's Oak Street Beach in Chicago, No. 5.
