It’s that time of year when we pause to look back at what happened in our city over the past year and consider what the coming year may bring. With the election of a new mayor familiar with city government, we can expect continuity as well as some major changes in how the city is run.

We could eliminate much of the remaining blight in Morningside if the DLBA would simply pay residents to take care of our own neighborhood. Other cities, like Flint, have partnered with organizations to maintain vacant land, and we could do the same.

The door-to-door trick-or-treating that many of us remember so fondly from our childhoods has been replaced in many Detroit neighborhoods by trunk-or-treat and organized parties. Not so for the Audubon Block Club.

I was at Trader Joe’s in Grosse Pointe a few weeks ago, where a young man outside the store was collecting signatures on a ballot initiative sponsored by Americans for Citizen Voting. It would require Michigan voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote.

All you need is one disaster, like a basement flood or a tree falling on your house, to know how important homeowners’ insurance is. But more than one quarter of Detroit residents simply can’t afford the high insurance rates we pay – often significantly higher than our suburban neighbors. O