They Really Do Read Those Things
If you haven’t seen it on Arbor Update already, the city council has decided to postpone the first reading of the couch ban ordinance until August. It seems that a few council members are taking the fire safety thing seriously and would like to see some actual evidence. But perhaps most significant is Bob Johnson’s comment: “It seemed like an open and shut case at first. But my e-mails are 3-to-1 against it.”
We think it’s interesting that main ban supporter Leigh Greden, a 1995 Albion College alum active in student government as an undergrad, is significantly younger than the average Ann Arbor city council member. (Unless that’s a different Leigh Greden.) Someone who graduated that year who had less ambition and drive than the estimable Mr. Greden, or took a less conventional career path, might be a grad student now himself. On a recent visit home, our parents were complaining that not one but two new village board members for our town were in their early or mid-twenties, and we wondered why this was possible in a sleepy suburb that’s essentially twentysomething Kryptonite, but not in one of the top ten college towns in the U.S. But perhaps it makes less of a difference than we thought.