Edward Vielmetti

links: Political blog roundup: garbage, mayoral race, school reuse, runway expansion and non-motorized transportation

A look at the political blogs in town. Community organizations and political candidates take on garbage collection, the Ann Arbor mayoral race, what happens to schools after they are closed, opposition to the runway expansion at the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport and advocacy for non-motorized transportation.

neighborhood news: Mitchell Elementary School 4th grade field trip rescues a muskrat stuck in a fence

A muskrat caught in a fence at the Portage/Baseline Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant was set free with the help of students of Kathy Spiess's fourth grade class at Mitchell Elementary School. The students were on the Ann Arbor Public Schools Water Tour, led by AAPS environmental educator Dave Szczygiel. Szczygiel leads about 400 field trips each school year.

Courtesy Dave Szczygiel, Ann Arbor Public Schools

A fourth grade class from Mitchell Elementary School on the Ann Arbor Public Schools Water Tour of the Portage/Baseline Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant got an unexpected education in the adaption of aquatic mammals to urbanization on Tuesday. An unfortunate muskrat was heading to its home in one of the water treatment lagoons when it got stuck in a cyclone fence. 

Dave Szczygiel of the AAPS Environmental Education program led the field trip, which is part of a program that takes all students in grades K-6 on outdoors trips throughout the year. (Good news: The muskrat is OK now.)

The fence was cut open so the muskrat could escape. He scampered off and could not be reached for comment.

links: Census forms are in the mail

Former University of Michigan sociology professor Robert Groves was named to head the U. S. Census Bureau last year. He's been busy with kicking off the 2010 census.

Millions of American households got a form in the mail with this year's census form. Here's a brief roundup of some of the sets of data and reports that will be produced from these surveys, and links to census resources from past years.

neighborhood News: South Main neighborhood making plans for University of Michigan graduation, President Obama's speech

Residents of the neighborhoods surrounding Michigan Stadium are still waiting to hear what plans the city of Ann Arbor and the Secret Service have for President Barack Obama's trip to town to give the 2010 spring commencement address at the stadium on May 1.

Stadium gates wil open at 6 a.m., and ceremonies start at 11 a.m. Undergraduates receiving their diplomas will get an allotment of eight tickets, and graduate students receiving advanced degrees will receive four. The Spring Commencement information pages note that some number of tickets will be made available to the general public, but plans have not been announced.

FCC releases 376 page National Broadband Plan

The staff of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the National Broadband Plan. Its goal is to ensure that "at least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second."

The National Broadband Plan is available for download. It weighs in at 12 megabytes and 376 pages; if all is going well, this will take about 30 minutes to download on a 56 kilobit/second modem. This may be your top speed if you live in parts of the county like Lyndon Township; that township government's guide to broadband access notes that high speed access to the Internet in that township is very limited, with minimum access to DSL and cable TV-based broadband internet, no widespread WiFi access and marginal reception in many areas of cell phone-based wireless data services.

Edward Vielmetti is the lead blogger at AnnArbor.com.

Argo Dam mill race water levels keep falling

Edward Vielmetti | AnnArbor.com

At the end of December, I noted on a walk along the Argo mill race embankment that the mill race was still draining. Two and a half months later, the water levels in this long, narrow pond are still going down. I wonder how low they will go, and what you'll see at the bottom as it's exposed.

links: C-SPAN opens its archives - including video of Larry Page, Mary Sue Coleman and lots of John Dingell

A new video archive from C-SPAN has 160,000 hours of archival video from every C-SPAN program that has run since 1987. The collection includes a full text index of the transcripts of the programs and a subject index so that you can look up people by name and see who they have spoken with.

Here's an illustration of some of the depth of this collection; it can't possibly do it justice, but I know that political operatives, scholars, comedians and historians will be mining their way through this collection for years.

links: It's almost spring: predicting flooding on the Huron River

In the spring, the snow melts and low lying parts of the Huron River valley flood. This happens pretty much every year. And while the river is not at flood stages now, there are some parts of the low lying areas that are inundated.

Here's a satellite view roundup of what is going on with the river and some links to sources for predictions of flooding. It doesn't include any muddy sneakers reports.

Our neighborhoods: Spring river bridge walks

With the coming of spring, it's good to start to think about what the world looks like from the perspective of the water that runs through our neighborhoods. Here are a few good vantage points on bridges and dams in Lower Town, the historic center of Ann Arbor, from which to enjoy the Huron River.

MEAP information for all Washtenaw County schools

The table below provides links to the State of Michigan Department of Education detailed reports for MEAP scores for all reporting schools in Washtenaw County. They are arranged alphabetically by school name.

The link takes you to the detail for each of the schools in the area; it also includes a number of schools which have detail for previous years but did not report this year.

Links: Interpreting MEAP scores through the years

MEAP scores are out today, showing test results for this year's round of mandated standardized test in the schools.

Today's links include some prior year coverage of this annual event, to give some perspective for how you might look at raw numerical scores and look at how students, parents, teachers and administrators frame individual reports and the trends from year to year.

FOIA Friday: Requesting police records and a Historic District Commission update

This week's FOIA Friday steps you through how to request police records, with some suggestions beyond the official Freedom of Information Act form that is provided for requests.

Also this week I'll provide a follow up on last week's appeal to the city of a FOIA request for Historic District Commission meeting minutes. I haven't heard anything from the city yet regarding that appeal - they have 10 business days to reply - but there has been progress.

Links: A brief history of skateboarding in Ann Arbor

The Ann Arbor Skatepark Action Committee has secured a pledge from Washtenaw County for matching funds for a skatepark it is working to build at Veteran's Memorial Park in Ann Arbor.

I thought I'd give some some background to this effort by finding contemporary accounts of skateboarding in the area, including some of the struggles to make it safe and legal. This is a tremendously incomplete account, missing all of the self-published local skate literature, yet it still illustrates several important phases of Ann Arbor skateboard culture.

Links: Online suggestions for bicycle routes around Ann Arbor, including new options from Google maps

Google recently announced that its Google Maps service now has bicycle routes. You can now plan your bicycle trips and it will guide you to bicycle trails, hills that are not so steep and roads more suitable for bicycle traffic.

Just in time for the coming of spring, here's some links to area bicycle route maps, both pre-Google and post-Google, to compare how well the service works and show some good routes.

3D Lab open house at the University of Michigan, March 10-12

The University of Michigan's 3D Lab is hosting an open house March 10-12 at the Duderstadt Center, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., on the U-M's North Campus. The lab offers services in the fields of 3D simulation, digital fabrication, education, visualization, motion capture, modeling, animation and application development. It is run as a part of the University Library system.

Workshops at the lab run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, March 10 and Thursday, March 11. On Friday, March 12, retired lab director Peter Beier gives a welcoming keynote at noon, followed by refreshments and an open house.

See the full schedule after the jump.