Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr. will be one of six local mayors to take part in WWJ Newsradio 950’s Business Breakfast Friday at the Centerpoint Marriott.

O’Reilly and the panel of local mayors will face tough questions for WWJ City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas and WWJ/Fox 2 Business Reporter Murray Feldman.

WWJ says the panel of mayors will discuss the types of tough budget choices they will have to make in these trying financial times while trying to keep their respective cities vibrant and attractive to businesses and citizens.

In addition to O’Reilly, the panelists include:

• Detroit Mayor Dave Bing

• Novi Mayor David Landry

• Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence

• Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte

• Warren Mayor Jim Fouts

For more information or to purchase a ticket to attend, click HERE.

Below are three Dearborn holiday events you’ll want to mark your calendar for next week.

First: Dearborn’s Christmas tree lighting, community sing-along is Tuesday, Dec. 1

Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., and Santa lead the crowd in a song at the 2008 Christmas tree-lighting and community sing-along.

The free event begins at 6 p.m. at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center, 15801 Michigan Ave.

The Dearborn High School Jazz Band will kick-off the festivities with a performance near the entrance to The Center’s Michael A. Guido Theater.

Following the band, five-year-old Maryam Majed will help Mayor O’Reilly light the tree. Maryam is a kindergarten student at Lowery Elementary School.

Second:The Dearborn Firefighters 25th annual Christmas benefit fundraiser for the Firefighters Burn Drive is Dec. 3. The event takes place from 6-11 p.m. at Cheli’s Chili Bar, 21918 Michigan Ave. Admission is free.

The evening will feature a chili bar, music and dancing, a cash bar, raffles, and gifts being given away every 30 minutes. All proceeds will be used by the Burn Drive to benefit children who are patients at southeastern Michigan hospital burn units.

For more information, contact John Ewing at 943-4145.

Third:The Dearborn Firefighters will welcome Santa at the Fire Safety House, 19750 Outer Drive, just across the street from Dearborn High School, on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5. Santa will make this unique entrance on the ladder truck both nights at 6 p.m.

Pictures with Santa, balloons, coloring books, cookies, hot chocolate and coffee will round off this holiday event. Donations will be graciously accepted and will benefit the Dearborn Firefighters Burn Drive.

For more information, call 313.478.6761.

Just a friendly reminder: Nov. 30-Dec. 4 is the final week for curbside collection of yard waste.

What this means is that if your neighborhood still has leaves sitting in piles at the curb at week’s end, you’ll have a choice to make: leave the mess at the curb and hope city crews pick them up (a service that also ends Dec. 4) or get busy bagging leaves to have them ready on the day of your regularly scheduled trash pickup.

Dec. 4 is the final day for leaf pickup in Dearborn. The week of Nov.30-Dec.4 is the final week for yard waste pickup.

Otherwise, they will remain at the curb or in yard bags alongside your garage until the Spring because crews will stop picking up yard waste after next week.

A Dearborn spokesperson says the city is trying to avoid overtime pay for crews, which is part of the reason leaves remain curbside in so many neighborhoods. The deadline week of Nov. 30- Dec. 4 for bagging yard waste is actually a week extension from previous years.

Let’s just hope we don’t get snow before then. Otherwise, snowplows will be pushing those leaves back onto the lawns of many a homeowner for a real sloppy mess.

The hustle and bustle of the holiday season is now upon us. But before planning what store to hit on the day after Thanksgiving, we thought it would be a good time for some contemplation today of the things in which we are grateful.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a nice piece about her take on this season of gratitude, writing that it has been a rough year for many of us and we are just grateful for just being here and still standing.

It’s a column worth reading. Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Still Here After a Rough Year

We’re serving up a new gratitude this Thanksgiving.

Last Thanksgiving, it looked as if a hard year was coming, and it was and it did. The holiday was shadowed by a sense of economic foreboding—Wall Street failing, companies falling and layoffs coming. It isn’t over—no one thinks it’s over. But the mood of this Thanksgiving looks to be different.

An unofficial poll of a dozen friends yields two themes: “We’re still here,” and, “I am so grateful.” Almost all experienced business reverses, some of which were deep, and some had personal misfortunes of one kind or another: “I am thankful that my mother’s death was fast and that she did not have to suffer,” wrote a beloved friend. But something tells me that a number of Thanksgiving dinners will be marked this year by a new or refreshed sense of gratitude: We’re still here. I am so grateful.

 For the full story click HERE.

Dearborn Councilman Robert Abraham says he is setting his sights on improving downtown west and east Dearborn  business districts because what he and other elected officials have done in the past “has not worked.”

In an open letter to Dearborn, a copy of which was e-mailed to us here,  the councilman says he is going to work with his council colleagues and the mayor to promote existing business and work to bring new business to our city.

“Two big goals I have for the City of Dearborn are focusing on seeing that our new Neighborhood Stabilization Program is successful, along with improving downtown west and east Dearborn,” Abraham says in his two-page letter. “These are two big challenges I believe our leaders can work on to help make business in Dearborn much better.

“Through our Dearborn Federation of Neighborhood Association (DFNA) my goal is to bring back the standards of our neighborhoods with more than 30 neighborhood associations. We are seeing far too many foreclosures and rentals in Dearborn and with that come unique challenges.

“Both of our downtown districts have suffered throughout this economic crisis and need our help. I am going to work with the council and Mayor to see that we meet regularly to address problems and issues and to develop new and fresh ideas to promote existing business. I am also going to work to see that the city puts forth extensive effort in bringing new business to Dearborn.

“Despite our best efforts, what we have done in the past has not worked and I believe it is time for some “out of the box” thinking. I am also going to be regularly asking the citizens for their input as to what we can do to help our business districts.”

Echoing what many readers of this site have said in the past, Abraham also is urging residents to support our local businesses. “Many of these business owners and employees are Dearborn residents and they contribute significantly to our tax base, local charities and civic organizations,” he writes. “To lose even one business to closing or to a move to another neighboring city is a tragedy we cannot afford. If we support them, then we contribute to making them successful, which helps the entire city, including our citizens.”

(more…)

MTV’s popular MADE cable TV show is coming to Dearborn to begin taping an upcoming segment at the city’s ice arena.

If you aren’t sure what MADE is all about, you can click HERE for a look at some earlier episodes. In a nutshell, MADE says it is all about proving that with hard work, dedication and some help from MTV, “kids just like you can accomplish anything they set their minds to.”

MADE producers aren’t yet telling city officials what the segment will be about but the fact the show is asking for permission to tape at the Dearborn Ice Skating Center (the Adray Ice Arena to us longtime Dearbornites), our guess is that it will either be about someone wanting to be a figure skater or a hockey player.

Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., says the show is expected to begin taping in the next few weeks. While it isn’t clear if the person starring in the segment is from Dearborn, the program’s site selection suggests that it will at least be a person from metro Detroit.

Either way, it should result in some positive coverage about Dearborn.

With an overpopulation of cats at the Dearborn Animal Shelter, the Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter are hosting a “cat adoption express” Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 2621 S. Telegraph road in Dearborn, next to Pet Supplies Plus.

“The purpose of this adoption event is to quickly find new homes for the overpopulation of cats in the care of our Shelter” says Elaine Greene, the shelter’s executive director. “Due to two critical hoarding cases this summer and a slower rate of cat adoptions, the Dearborn Animal Shelter is in immediate need of placing felines into homes.”

Reduced adoption fees for the felines are as follows: kittens (less than 4 months) $45 each, cats (4 months and older) $20 each and any second cat or kitten adopted is free. Adoption fees include sterilization, microchip and first set of vaccinations.

“We hope this will expedite cat adoptions,” Greene said. “The Dearborn Animal Shelter training center (2621 S. Telegraph) is easier to access, this event will feature only cats and kittens and rates are reduced for quicker adoption.”

For more information, you can contact Elaine Greene, at DASGreene@aol.com or 313-943-2697

Earlier last week we mentioned in our Upcoming Events section that the Ford Historic Homes District was celebrating its 90th year with its annual home tour from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 6.

Well, The Detroit News ran a fantastic good-news story about Dearborn’s Ford Historic Homes District on Friday the 13th and the upcoming home tour that we’re hopeful will help generate even better attendance than in previous years for this neighborhood association.

This is a Model A home photo in the Ford Historic Homes District taken back in the day.

The article is a shot in the arm for Dearborn and does a nice job of capturing the neighborhood’s charm. It is well worth reading and clicking through the photographs, too.

Here is just the top few paragraphs from the story:

Ford Homes Historic District celebrates 90 years

By Susan R. Pollack / Detroit News Design Writer

Jason Hayburn and his family live in a Model A.

But it’s not one of Henry Ford’s vintage cars.

Rather, it’s a distinctive home in an historic west Dearborn neighborhood that’s a lesser-known — though no less fascinating — part of the auto pioneer’s legacy.

The Hayburns live in the Ford Homes Historic District, a community of 250 high-quality yet affordable houses built for Ford Tractor Plant workers in 1919 and 1920.

One of America’s first planned subdivisions, the neighborhood was built using production concepts borrowed from the assembly line. It features seven home styles — models A-F, plus a modified, four-bedroom version of D — by architect Albert Wood, who also designed Henry Ford Hospital and the Masonic Temple.

The two-story homes, sometimes called Ford Colonials, are set back at different distances from the streets to avoid cookie-cutter sameness, and included front or side porches to promote neighborliness, according to district historians. Building materials were delivered to the site via a mini railroad, they say, with horses pulling train cars along tracks laid in a backyard alley and separate crews of construction workers — diggers, plumbers, painters, etc. — rotating from house to house.

“It’s quaint and charming — I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” said Don Ludwig, a Ford Homes history buff, as he washed the original wavy-glass windows on his Model F home, with its trademark central entrance, on Nona Street this week.

Over in his Model A on Park Street, Hayburn is among 11 district homeowners preparing to throw open their front doors — his is a 1919 wood original — and welcome visitors to a Holiday Home Tour on Dec. 6, to celebrate the neighborhood’s 90th anniversary.

For the complete article in The Detroit News, click HERE.

With Dearborn’s loose leaf collection program set to come to an end Dec. 4, there is a possibility many of us may be bagging that last batch of leaves from the front lawn.

In a city press release, Dearborn officials say this:

“The volume of leaves this year means that City crews cannot reach every street within each trash section on that trash day. It may take three weeks before the leaves on your street are picked up on your trash day.

“For instance, if you live in the Tuesday trash collection section, it may take three Tuesdays before leaves are picked up on your street.”

While the city recommends that leaves not be raked into the street until the day before your trash day or ideally until you know crews are coming to pick them up, a drive through most neighborhoods shows that most are already in the street.

To find out if your city does have a leaf collection day coming, you can call the city’s Leaf Collection Hotline at 313-943-2444 after 3 p.m. the day before your trash day. Alternatively, you may also call 313-943-2107 from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. to get an estimate of where crews are expected to be over the next several days.

Now the city doe say that to guarantee leaf pickup, the best bet is to bag your leaves and then set them out the night before trash day. While some balk at the thought of having to bag – with the amount of trees in some neighborhoods bagging leaves can result in upwards of 25 bags curbside – it is better than the days of leaf burning.

The City of Dearborn wants residents to know that there will be people from the Working America AFL-CIO canvassing Dearborn neighborhoods beginning today.

The organization will be canvassing neighborhoods through Dec. 31 in hopes of signing up new members.

The canvassers will be out from the late afternoon until 9 p.m.

Dearborn officials say the canvassers will carry prominently displayed picture identification cards. The vehicle they will be using is a red Dodge Caravan with an Ohio license plate.

The City of Dearborn says it does not endorse or object to this activity, but requires all canvassers to follow city ordinances.

Resident should call the Police Department’s non-emergency number at 943-2201 if they have concerns about canvassers on their street.