Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Wolf hunts and millages


Today is an important day for questions of sustainability vs. austerity here in Michigan.  First, the state Board of Canvassers will be meeting today to decide whether to certify a ballot initiative to stop the wolf hunt in the state.  There is already an intitative that would do that, but the state legislature passed a measure that makes it meaningless unless the law they passed is repealed.  This new ballot measure would do exactly that.  Meanwhile, the pro-hunting forces are trying to get their own measure on the ballot.  This could mean we have three ballot initiatives about wolf hunting this November.  Won't that be fun?

The Board of Canvassers will also be considering whether to give the Independent Non Affiliation Party of Michigan ballot access.  In contrast to the ballot measure about wolf hunting, I suspect they won't approve it.

Today is also an election day for millages.  In addition to the usual school millages, there are two that I'm paying special attention to as questions of sustainability vs. austerity.  In my Examiner.com beat of Washtenaw County, there is a millage to improve service for the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA AKA "The Ride").  I'm not only interested in this professionally, but personally, as I rode "The Ride" regularly for the decade I lived in Ann Arbor.  It was a great bus system then and allowed my family to go from having two cars and driving each one 100 miles a day to having one car and driving it 100 miles a week.*  Of course I'm rooting for it to pass.

The other question is a bond and millage for the Birmingham Public Library, one town over from me in Oakland County.  I'm not covering that for Examiner.com, but I am rooting for that one to pass, too.  Watch the WXYZ video.


Stay tuned for reports on all of these, whether reprinted from Examiner.com or directly on this blog, tonight.

*Of course, moving from Anaheim, California, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, helped.

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