Dearborn resident Andrew Angel and his wife, Jean, sent this letter to us, the local papers, the Dearborn Board of Education, the Dearborn Federation of Teachers and the Dearborn Administrators Association.

The letter is timely and well thought out. Mr. Angel asks school leaders to put themselves in the shoes of parents and think what will happen if the board, administration and unions cannot deliver quality education to all children.

“How long do you expect parents to remain in the district if class sizes grow 5% every year? If split grade classrooms are the norm? If our children don’t have school libraries? If we cannot get in touch with administrators because we saved $8,000 on Blackberries? If Halal meals or after school sports are not available? Would you keep your children in the district? Those of us who have the option of moving or paying for private school will be gone in a few years at the most. What will our district look like then? What contract will the unions negotiate with an emergency financial manager?”

Mr. Angel says he and his wife feel that the more people who read it, the more people will think about Dearborn’s school situation and hopefully do something about it.

Mr. Angel earned an undergraduate degree at Michigan State University in public policy and a master’s in business administration. Professionally, he is involved in the logistics side of the corporate world and has held various positions dealing with process improvement, program budgeting and cost reduction.

His letter begins below.

Andrew Angel

Dear Dearborn Educators,

We are proud district parents, and we are writing to ask you to keep four things in mind as you enter the final stages of contract negotiations and the resolution of our current budget crisis:

1) The absolute necessity of structural change for both teachers and administration.

2) Changing the current acrimonious and destructive tone of the budget crisis.

3) Focusing on where the real root cause of our problem lies- Lansing.

4) The critical role the public schools play in keeping our city healthy.

All district employees have had to adjust their expectations downward whether they are Dearborn Federation of Teachers, Association of Dearborn School Administrators, Cabinet or Dearborn School Operating Engineers Association. Most residents of our city and state are adjusting their expectations downward as well.

According to Census data just released, the median adjusted gross income for the state of Michigan fell from $35k in 2000 to $32.6k in 2007. Those numbers are not adjusted for inflation and do not include the effect of rising cost of health care for those that still have it. From what the economic forecasters tell us, we can count on that trend continuing at least another year.

At the same time our district is also facing a change in the students it serves. In 2000, 18.7% of school age children in our district’s boundaries lived under the poverty level. In 2008, a staggering 34.3% now live below that threshold. That means a family of 5 with an annual income of less than $24,800. Please realize that many of those students are children of families who “did everything right,” invested in their education, worked hard, lived below their means, and are now unemployed with few prospects.

The reality of our budget is that Lansing will continue to decide how much money we have available for wages and benefits. You must work together to make significant changes in the promises that we make in the union contracts. Even if all of the unions agreed to a 6.3% wage cut and another step freeze, we will be in the same situation every year if you assume that the district can agree to a salary schedule and then hope to get enough money from the state. Wages and benefit gains must be contractually linked to state appropriations.

Structural change cannot just mean that we ask the teachers to take pay cuts when

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Here is a great new way to support Dearborn businesses.

A new marketing initiative created by a local economics team and students from Dearborn High School could help jump start the Dearborn economy now with the holiday season in full swing.

The new “Shop Dearborn” campaign is the brainchild of Dearborn High School’s Intro to Marketing class. The program is simple: purchase a “Shop Dearborn” card for $25 and then enjoy discounts at more than 200 local participating businesses. Discounts are recurring and the card is active for one year.

The key-chain card, available to both Dearborn residents and non-residents, can be purchased at the school or by clicking HERE.  Participating businesses can also be found at this site. Those businesses who want to participate in this program can do so for free and proceeds will help benefit the Dearborn Education Foundation and ultimately Dearborn Schools.

WDIV Channel 4 did a story after our post here.  The Channel 4 story can be viewed by clicking  Shop Dearborn

The Dearborn City Council could take a vote as early as this week on whether to extend a preferred developer’s agreement with local investor Hakim Fakhoury.

The preferred developer’s agreement is for a major development project on the block north of Michigan between Military and Howard. The agreement, which gives Fakhoury exclusive development rights to the city-owned parking lot, is set to expire at year’s end, according to the Dearborn Times Herald.

Fakhoury, who already owns many abutting properties, tells the Times Herald that the project would include an Emagine! movie theater, retail suites and condominiums or student housing.

We wrote about this proposed project here a few years ago, before the economy took a nosedive.

City Council President Thomas Tafelski tells the Times Herald  he is concerned about how much Fakhoury’s proposal has changed since it was first introduced more than four years ago.

“If the project warrants additional time, then that’s something the council must consider,” Tafelski tells the Times Herald. “But I will also say if the project doesn’t have proper financing, proper direction or the proper modifications, then maybe we should shelve this project and seek new proposals or just let Mr. Fakhoury develop the properties he already owns along Michigan Avenue.”

One of the main sticking points is over parking, the Times Herald reports below.

When the agreement was first signed, city officials indicated they would be willing to build two parking decks to support the project. The tentative plan called for the city to build the structures and then recoup the costs through tax revenues generated by the accompanying developments.

The same model was used by the city in developer Burton-Katzman’s West Village Commons, directly across the street south of Fakhoury’s project, but has since shown that it exposes the city to too much liability. Since the WVC decks were built in 2005, the city has been forced to cover about $2.5 million in revenue shortfalls caused by Burton-Katzman’s failure to complete several portions of the project that would have been contributing to the bond payments.

But Fakhoury said he is unfairly being punished for Burton-Katzman’s misdeeds. Fakhoury said he purchased additional properties to help facilitate the project with the understanding that the city would build the decks. Now he’s stuck holding properties that he said are liabilities — without the help of the larger project to generate economic activity.

“I have done everything they’ve asked of me,” Fakhoury said.“I’ve brought them letters of intent (from prospective tenants), I bought the buildings, and now they don’t want to do what they’re supposed to.”

To read the entire Times Herald story, click here.

Snap Fitness, a franchise business that started in Minneapolis in 2003, will soon be moving into Dearborn.

Snap Fitness is moving into the former Boston Market building on Telegraph, just north of Cherry Hill in Dearborn.

The building at 136 north Telegraph Road that once housed a Boston Market is in the process of being transformed into a fitness center with state-of-the-art equipment that members can access 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Snap Fitness which launched in just 2003, today has more than 2,000 locations and some 400,000 members globally. The fitness center’s recipe for success appears to be taking the most readily used health equipment and putting it into smaller, passcard-secure locations with affordable membership pricing. Inc. Magazine’s  annual survey of fast growing companies listed Snap Fitness as the second-highest concept in the health category. Overall, Snap Fitness was one of the top 20 fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S., according to Inc.

The remodeling of the former Boston Market, located just north of Cherry Hill, is underway but temporarily came to a halt Tuesday, Dec. 1, when Dearborn city inspectors issued a stop-work order. City officials told us the stop work order was issued because remodeling work was being done inside the building without a permit. Gutting the building does not require a permit but once work begins on remodeling one is required.

Once the permit is issued, work on the inside of the building will continue. The Snap Fitness website lists the new Dearborn location but not yet a date for its official opening.

It is nice to see some new retail move into Dearborn. We welcome the new business owners to the neighborhood and wish them the best of luck.

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.

 The 2009 Arab Film Festival, at Dearborn’s Arab American National Museum on Michigan Avenue, opens Thursday Dec. 3 and runs through Dec. 5.

The AANM’s popular annual event presents short and feature-length films made by Arab American and Arab World filmmakers on topics of interest to all movie fans.

One documentary being shown at the museum is a semi-finalist for an Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary Feature. Called Garbage Dreams the film is about the tale of three boys who make their living in Cairo’s garbage trade and their confrontation with a waste conglomerate. The film is one of 15 from a field of 89 entries to be named an Academy Award semi-finalist. Five finalists from this category will be chosen on Feb. 2, 2010 for a chance to win an Academy Award on March 7.

The screening of Garbage Dreams is Dec. 5 at 8:25 p.m.

Garbage Dreams closes out the AANM’s 2009 Arab Film Festival with a screening at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 5.

The complete December 3-5 festival schedule, advance tickets and weekend passes are available online at www.arabamericanmuseum.org; tickets and passes also available at the door. All screenings take place in the 156-seat auditorium on the AANM’s lower level. The museum is located at 13624 Michigan Ave., just west of Schaefer Road, in Dearborn. Call 313-582-2266 for more information.

Free, lighted parking is available in the municipal lot behind the museum. For driving directions, click here or call the museum.

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.”

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