Opinion
What Steps Can We Take to Address Our Housing Crisis?
Guest Opinion
By Yarrow Brown | June 10, 2023
It’s time to focus on things you can do right now in your community to keep the conversation going around housing. With the summer arriving, there is added pressure for people trying to find housing, and the real estate market continues to price people out who live and work here year round. Housing connects to almost everything else in our complex community system. Housing stability, quality, safety, and affordability all affect health ... Read More >>
Same Trump, New Campaign Lies
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | June 10, 2023
At least one presidential candidate is back to his old ways, his lie machine barely slowing down. Here’s a sampling. According to the Associated Press, Trump claims he “inherited record high unemployment” and created the “lowest unemployment in history.” The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) would beg to differ. In January, 2017, when Trump took office, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. The highest on record was 24.9 percent in several months ... Read More >>
More Heat, Less Water
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | June 3, 2023
Every agreement ever reached attempting to allocate Colorado River water has had the same problem—more water has been promised than actually exists. In 1922, the seven states with a direct interest in the Colorado and its watershed came to an agreement called the Colorado River Compact. The seven states divided into the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the lower basin states of California, Nevada, and Arizona. ... Read More >>
The Tragic Lives of Mass Shooters
Guest Opinion
By Greg Holmes | June 3, 2023
Another day, another mass shooting. There have been over 200 mass shootings so far this year in the U.S. as we head to an all-time yearly record. The question is no longer if a shooting will occur, but where it will happen next. Is there anything that can be done to stop these horrific attacks? After each shooting, there is an understandable outcry and debate about whether guns and access to them ... Read More >>
Michigan Values: The Need for Driver’s License Reform
Guest Opinion
By Loida Tapia | May 27, 2023
Imagine that every time you drive to the doctor’s office, work, or take your child to school, your life could be pulled apart. This is the reality for 55,000 Michigan residents who lack citizenship status. Michigan’s immigrant community deserves access to driver’s licenses and state identification cards—a right they had until 2008—and our elected officials in Lansing must take action and provide driver’s licenses for all by passing the Drive SAFE (Safety, ... Read More >>
Reparations Won’t Repair Much
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | May 27, 2023
Reparations for Black Americans is an idea as old as the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery in 1865. General William Sherman wanted to appropriate 400,000 acres of former slave owners’ land and, with Field Order 15, provide former slave families with 40 acres of “tillable” land. (There was no mention of a mule in Sherman’s order, but when many former slaves were given an army mule, the order came to be known as ... Read More >>
No More Battlefield Flowers
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | May 20, 2023
In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row… John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and doctor, wrote those words during World War I (WWI) from the perspective of young men recently killed in battle. It became a memorial for all fallen soldiers in every war, and poppies became a symbol of remembrance for those soldiers. (Flanders Fields, incidentally, is a real place, now a cemetery located in Belgium, one of ... Read More >>
Get U.P. and Get Out
Guest Opinion
By Karen Mulvahill | May 20, 2023
“We’re located in the Upper Peninsula. Do you know where that is?” the man asked over the phone. “Yes,” I responded, thinking Duh, but learning later that a lot of southeast Michigan residents have only the vaguest awareness of that vast expanse north of the mitten and shaped like the hand turned sideways with the thumb up. “We’re in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Do you know where that is?” “Yes.” “We’re in ... Read More >>
Our Shared Responsibility and Vision for the Future
Guest Opinion
By Gabe Schneider | May 20, 2023
I view Traverse City as our regional hub for economic and social activity. We raise families, build businesses, and find community and a sense of belonging here. I call TC home, even though I live in a neighboring township. My kids are TCAPS students, and my business has a Front Street mailing address. Downtown TC is special; drawing people like me and my family from around the region and around the world. ... Read More >>
Promises Made, Promises Kept
Guest Opinion
By Jim Carruthers | May 20, 2023
Several decades ago (mid 1990s), Traverse City convened area businesses and citizens to talk about “blight” in downtown. They formed the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) TIF Advisory Committee, whose mission was to come up with a plan to do something about it. A tax incentive program called tax increment financing, more commonly known as TIF, was gaining traction across the nation and helping communities with the redevelopment of urban blight in deficient ... Read More >>
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