Ann Arbor City Council videos are being uploaded to Google Video. It's not entirely clear from the Google site who is doing this, but they appear to be long, long, unedited versions pulled off the air from CTN.
Murph got the exclusive on the city council mashup video with short (and cruel) edits from a recent session.
Technorati Tags: annarbor, government
Meeting recap, as short as possible. We had 16 people, new record.
UPDATE: I linked everyone's names that I could to some hint at current status in more detail.
Laura (mitten) is going to the symphony and redoing her web site for SXSW.
Spencer (swthomas) shepherded out a code release for JSTOR and is spending time on Flickr.
Don (dmblumenthal) is getting his infosec web site up and is publishing on Global Cyber Risk.
Brian (bkerr) is recovering from Recent Changes Camp and handed out a Local Names flier.
Matt is at JSTOR and has an itch to do a startup again. (First time at a2b3)
Bill (tozier) explains things to people and is doing an agile research and collaboration startup.
Tom (studytag) is doing business plan improvement and is working on SAT improvement skills.
Larry (polygon) handed out library district maps and is raising reelection money on President's Day.
Kathy (kathleenbrade) has a really bad cold and had mostly lost her voice.
Mark (marksmith) doesn't have a really bad cold yet, and was at CodeMash in Ohio.
Jose (jose) launched ATLAS and is getting caught up with sleep.
Lance (djlancer) is looking for transcoders in Darwin Ports.
Ed (emv, a2b3, vacuum, superpatron) is playing World of GoogleCraft and going to school for NAAPID.
Helene (hsgconsultingllc) is doing independent project management and grief counseling.
Joe (jcothrel)has a new X60 Thinkpad and is reorganizing his laptop for the nth time.
Matt (matth) is working on the Residential College's 40th anniversary and working at AADL.
Show and tell:
polygon: map of Washtenaw County library districts
bkerr: flyer from the Local Names project
bkerr: business cards from Print100, $0.03 ea from Hong Kong, nifty rounded corners
emv: moo card with Link Bus map
bkerr: badge from Recent Changes Camp
Wanted:
emv: LocalNames plugin or script for Ecto so I can link this at typing speed, and an a2b3 namespace.
Meeting notes and rituals:
Introductions around the table starts at 12:30 and should take about 1 min apiece. We were in at about 11:45, grabbed 5 tables, and I left at 1pm. Meeting writeup took 20 minutes.
Technorati Tags: a2b3, aadl, aata, agile, atlas, codemash, community_indicators, darwinports, eaccents, ecto, googlecraft, infosec, jstor, library, linkbus, localnames, naapid, pfired, pfizer, print100, rcc2007, studytag, superpatron, sxsw, thinkpad, transcoder, umsi, vacuum, wiki
From the Ann Arbor City Clerk:
Absentee Ballots
Applications for absentee ballots are accepted up to 75 days prior to each election. A signed application must be received by the City Clerk before an absentee ballot will be issued. To obtain an absentee ballot, call the City Clerk at 734-994-2725 or complete the attached form and mail or hand deliver it.
Absentee Ballot Application Form
"While I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert
your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me
without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean
air and drinking clean water."
-- Harry Taylor (thankyouharrytaylor.org), a citizen of
Charlotte, NC and a Sierra Club member, who made headlines
recently when he stood up at a town hall meeting and told
President Bush he has "never felt more ashamed of [his]
leadership in Washington."
thanks mms for the pointer
from http://www.aadl.org/aboutus/board
2006 Election Information:
Nominating petitions are now available for individuals who are interested in filing for the May 2, 2006 election for Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees. Three candidates will be elected to each
serve a four-year term.
Petitions and election information are available at the County Clerk’s Office in the Washtenaw County Building at 200 North Main Street in Ann Arbor. Potential Board candidates must return completed petitions to the Clerk’s Office by 4:00 pm, February 7, 2006.
The election will take place on May 2, 2006, and elected candidates will begin their terms on July 1, 2006. These are four-year terms, ending on June 30, 2010.
For more information, contact the County Clerk’s office at 222-6730.
UPDATE: discussion at Arbor Update: AADL Board election filings upcoming.
I had a good talk with Griff Wigley of Northfield Citizens Online, a non-profit in Northfield, MN that promotes the "civic blogosphere" there. He provides leadership coaching to civic leaders who want to use weblogs effectively to communicate their voice and their ideas to citizens of their community.
NCO grew out of the Northfield Free-Net, and started 20+ years ago. Griff says that things really started to take off once they got connected to the Internet.
Here in Ann Arbor, there's not much engagement by local politicians to put their thoughts and ideas on civic life into blogs. (They are all on email, but media communications with the public is almost entirely via the local newspaper.) A notable exception is Larry Kestenbaum, the county clerk and register of deeds for Washtenaw County, who keeps a blog in which he often cc's the public on letters that he writes to his staff keeping them up to date on what's going on in his office. The civic blogosphere here is also well-represented by the Ann Arbor District Library which features a weblog by its director, Josie Parker.
Links:
- For Minnesota's Griff Wigley, the Internet is another form of social work (MediaGiraffe)
- Northfield Citizens Online
- Northfield's Civic Blogosphere
Technorati Tags: northfield, griff, wigley, blogosphere, civicblogosphere
Got this correspondence from Chris Kolb, my state rep for District 53 in Michigan, in response to a query:
"Thank you for your recent correspondence opposing House Bill 4473 that would change the time frame for when local governments could inspect rental properties and the fees they charge for these inspections. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know of your opposition to this legislation. I, too, oppose this legislation as written."
"This legislation, if passed in its current form, would restrict the ability of local governments to ensure that safe housing is available to the public. In particular, I have the following concerns with the legislation:"
"The legislation's restriction of inspection of HUD and MSHDA rental units to a complaint only basis does not protect the residents of these units. HUD inspection criteria is not as protective as most city ordinances; HUD does not even require smoke detectors."
"The definition of "violation" in this bill does not differentiate between the seriousness of the violation. One major violation may be much more important to correct than several minor violations. This bill does not recognize the difference in these types of violations."
"The cost of inspections is shifted from the property owners to the taxpayers in the local communities."
"By restricting the frequency of inspections, this bill interferes with a local government's ability to develop an inspection schedule that best fits the needs of that community. College towns often have higher turnover in tenants and a more frequent inspection schedule can help protect the living conditions of the tenants and the physical condition of the rental unit."
"Thank you once again for letting me know that you, too, oppose House Bill 4473. I appreciate you letting me know of your opposition to this legislation. Please feel free to contact me on this or any other issue of importance to you."
Sincerely,
Representative Chris Kolb
53rd District
I recently had a nice lunch with Wayne Baker at Kang's Coffee Break on South University. Kang's is one of my favorite places for Korean food in town. I had (as I usually have) the "jang kuk bob" soup, a beef soup which comes with a very spicy pepper paste as a side plus delicious kim chi; Wayne had "bi bim bob". We sat near the window.
Prof. Baker is speaking at the Ross School of Business on the U of Michigan campus at 6:30pm on April 12, 2005 on "America's Crisis of Values".
He has just finished a book out from Princeton University Press on this topic. It's a comparative study based on data from the World Values Surveys of what people believe in in the U.S. compared to in other traditional and secular societies, and how a unique combination of traditional values and modern secular individualism define something common to America.
Continue reading ""America's Crisis of Values", Korean lunch with Wayne Baker at Kang's" »
Yesterday, I turned over many of my papers I accumulated during my four and a half years living in Ann Arbor to the Bentley Historical Collection at the University of Michigan.
Included in the collection is information on student activism at the University of Michigan, research and notes from his time as an investigative reporter at the Michigan Daily, information about the secret societies Vulcan and Michigamua, and a large collection of materials from the BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) group.
Should be a good source of primary materials for someone looking at the Michigan campus 2000-2004, good to Rob to be so organized with this stuff!
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