municipal​
New Birmingham fire chief selection okayed
Birmingham City Commissioners approved the promotion of Matt Bartalino to serve as chief of the city’s fire department during the Monday, December 15, meeting.
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Nine-story project eyed for Woodward parcel
Birmingham Planning Board members on Wednesday, December 10, held a pre-application discussion relative to a nine-story mixed use development proposed for the long-vacant corner of Maple and Woodward in the Triangle District, proposed by the Beztac Company.
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Enclave home development sparks debate
Bloomfield Township residents had a lot to say about the upcoming Enclave residential development in conjunction with Temple Beth El, as did the board of trustees, who weren’t in full agreement even at the end at their board meeting on Monday, December 8.
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Three-story Woodward/Quarton building set
A new three-story office building is set to be constructed at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Quarton Road in Birmingham after city commissioners gave the green light during the Monday, December 15, meeting.
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Multimodal transportation board reviewed
Following over a decade in action, Birmingham’s multimodal transportation board (MMTB) has been the recent topic of discussion from the city’s commission as commissioners have set out to review and potentially redefine the scope of the board, the topic of a joint meeting of both boards on Thursday, December 11.
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Museum to implement new strategic plan
The Birmingham Museum is ready to implement a new strategic plan for 2026 through 2028 after the document was approved by city commissioners during the Monday, December 15, meeting.
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Tejani submits resignation from school board
Birmingham Public Schools Board of Education Trustee Jason Tejani has submitted his resignation, effective December 31 of this year.
Bag of cash stolen from theatre bathroom
A Bloomfield Hills man, while in a movie theatre at the 200 block of S. Old Woodward in Birmingham, allegedly had a bag with $600 in cash stolen on Saturday, December 6, from the theatre bathroom.
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Local retail theft suspect nabbed in Ann Arbor
Early in the day on Tuesday, December 9, a Detroit woman with a felony arrest warrant issued out of Birmingham was caught and arrested by Ann Arbor police for a similar crime.
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Storage units broken into but nothing taken
Bloomfield Township police on Monday, December 8, responded to the iStorage Self Storage facility located at 1782 Pontiac Drive for multiple storage units that were broken into.
The new American Gold Rush – cannabis. The Wild West arrived in the Midwest through cannabis sales, with Michigan leading the way in legalizing recreational use in 2018. A decade earlier, medicinal use had been legalized in November 2008, and by 2019, there were approximately 450 medical provisioning centers, serving 283,000 registered patients – one of the largest in the United States. The number of licensed facilities for growing, processing, and compliance for the medical market was in the hundreds as well. In October of 2019, Michigan began accepting applications for its first recreational marijuana businesses, with sales beginning on December 1, 2019. The initial licenses were awarded in November 2019, primarily to existing medical license holders who could meet the conversion criteria. By the end of 2019 and into early January 2020, there were 27 active adult-use licenses across the state.
When U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens announced for the U.S. Senate this year, and state Senator Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield) announced for her House seat, some political observers speculated that his entry into the Democratic primary would not necessarily clear the field of other contenders but would limit the number of candidates for this congressional district that includes most of Oakland County. Lots of luck with that theory.
