NEWSPAPERS Special Edition
Court’s ruling on wages, sick time reverberates across region
WORKERS, BUSINESSES, ASSOCIATIONS REACT TO DIVIDED MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT DECISION
BY NICK POWERS npowers@candgnews.com
METRO DETROIT — A recent 4-3 ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court affecting the state’s laws governing minimum wage and sick time is sending shockwaves through many businesses, including the restaurant industry.
All workers will receive a pay bump to more than $12 an hour in 2025 with tipped workers
gradually reaching $12 in 2029. The final amounts will be determined by the state’s treasurer. The current minimum wage is $10.33 and $3.93 for tipped workers.
All employees, including part-time and temporary workers, are entitled to paid sick leave. Every 30 hours an employee works generates one hour of paid sick leave. Employees get 72 hours paid sick time a year at large companies. However,
LOCAL POLICE SEE INCREASE IN DRUGGED DRIVING
IMPAIRED DRIVING CRASHES RISE STATEWIDE
BY MARY BETH ALMOND malmond@candgnews.com
OAKLAND COUNTY — Impaired driving crashes across Michigan are on the rise, a troubling statistic released in a study from Bridge Michigan, which also found that police across the state are not making as many arrests for drunk driving as they have in the past.
The study found fatal alcohol and drug-related crashes have risen by 40% across Michigan, with alcohol-and-drug related fatalities up statewide and in many counties — including Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne.
Over the last five years, Nick Soley, of the Bloomfield Township Police Department, said the township has seen an increase in “drugged driving.”
“That’s twofold. It’s illicit drugs and also prescription drugs, which is, obviously, just as dangerous as drunk driving,” he said. “The driving pattern may be erratic and may be similar to what we see with drunk driving, when we talk about swerving and speeds and things like that, and even being passed out behind the wheel.”
Now that marijuana is legal in Michigan, Solely said, many people have forgotten the ramifications of marijuana, adding that many others have been caught on the road abusing prescription drugs.
“How many prescription bottles do we see that say don’t operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery? I think several people have the notion that if I’m using them as they are prescribed by my doctor, I’m good to go. That’s not the case. I always use the common example of Ambien. It’s a sleeping
ABOVE: Patrons enjoy food and drinks at the bar at Troy’s Sedona Taphouse location at 198 E Big Beaver Road Aug. 12. RIGHT: A ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court will increase the state’s minimum wage. The current minimum wage is $10.33 and $3.93 for tipped workers.
Photo by Erin Sanchez
Photo provided by Chris Johnston
A deputy from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office approaches a vehicle during a traffic stop.
Photo provided by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office
on
STAR-STUDDED
TALENT ANNOUNCED FOR 2024 ARTS, BEATS & EATS
BY TAYLOR CHRISTENSEN tchristensen@candgnews.com
ROYAL OAK — Arts, Beats & Eats is set and ready to showcase star-studded performances, one-of-a-kind artists and plenty of great tastes at the end of summer festival.
On July 31, organizers of the event released the music lineup that will be performing Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
Featuring nine stages, there will be hundreds of musical acts representing a variety of genres. For the 2024 event, there will be 65 new local artists, bands and ensembles taking the stages at Arts, Beats & Eats.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick, known for songs including “I Want You to Want Me” and “Surrender,” will be performing 7:30. to 9 p.m. Aug. 30 on the Jim Beam National Stage.
Additionally that night, the 1980s double-platinum rock band Tesla, who are well known for “Love Song,” will be performing on the Jim Beam National Stage from 9:30 to 11 p.m.
Chairman of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners Dave Woodward expressed his appreciation for the event at the press conference and highlighted the importance it has had for him and his family throughout the years.
“I had the opportunity to attend the very first Arts, Beats & Eats in 1998 in Pontiac, and I have been coming every single year,” Woodward said. “My children have grown up with this festival and refer to it as the party in their town. Nowhere else in Michigan are you going to find the incredible musical talent that you do at Arts, Beats & Eats.”
Larson Omegabots encourage team building through robotics
BY SARAH WRIGHT swright@candgnews.com
TROY — Middle schoolers with an interest in robotics can work together and build their skills through the Omegabots robotics team at Larson Middle School.
The Omegabots, formed in 2016, are one of the many robotics programs available through the Troy School District. Most of the programs are led and supported by parent volunteers.
“As the students graduate from Larson, they would ‘pass the torch’ to the next generation of students, and their parents would help support the team,” current Omegabots coach Jeff Blakely said in an email. “In 2022 I took over as head coach for the Omegabots. Prior to that I was a coach and/or mentor for various teams at Larson Middle School since 2020.”
Prior to his involvement with the robot-
See ROBOTICS on page 5A
ABOVE: Members of the Omegabots robotics team at Larson Middle School work together on various tasks to prepare for robotics competitions. TOP: The Omegabots robotics team received high placement during one of their recent competitions.
Photos provided by Jeff Blakely
Event Producer Jon Witz
July 31 introduces the many musical acts that will play at the 2024 Arts, Beats & Eats festival over Labor Day weekend. The band Your Generation in Concert helps to introduce the performers by singing some of their well-known songs.
Photo provided by Soaring Eagle Arts, Beats & Eats presented by Flagstar Bank
page 1A
pill. It’s meant to put you to sleep, so you shouldn’t be driving on those pills.”
According to the Michigan State Police annual drunk driving audit, in 2023 the state had nearly 10,500 crashes where a driver was found to be impaired, resulting in 454 deaths and more than 6,300 injuries.
“COVID brought out a lot of addiction problems, or drug and alcohol use,” Soley said. “People turned to that when they didn’t feel like going to the doctor because it was scary. We’re still definitely looking at the ramifications from that.”
While the number of impaired crashes has increased, drunk driving arrests across Michigan have dropped 28% from 2014 to 2023, declining in 67 of the state’s 83 counties since 2014, according to Bridge. In Oakland County, drunk-driving arrests from 2014 to 2023 were down 20%. They were down 16% in Wayne and 15% in Macomb, according to annual state drunk driving audits.
“If you look at COVID, traffic enforcement went down dramatically because we obviously wanted a lot less face-to-face
interpersonal contact … but what went up during COVID was the feeling of isolation, anxiety, depression,” Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said. “Obviously, self-medication comes in a variety of forms — including alcohol and drugs — so you have a recipe for less enforcement and higher consumption of alcoholic drugs, which, obviously, if you do the math on that, leads to more crashes.”
The disparity between crashes and arrests, experts say, correlates with fewer police officers and less traffic enforcement, a recipe for more dangerous driving.
Bouchard confirmed there are a lot fewer police officers on the streets around Michigan than there were 20 years ago, including in Oakland County.
“Every agency is struggling with their budgets and they’re struggling with recruiting and retention as well,” he explained. “Right now, we have 40 vacancies in the Sheriff’s Office alone, so if you have less people, you’re going to have less eyes, and obviously enforcement.”
“We’re down to seven officers,” Soley added. “Everywhere is short. You couple that with the facts that I do know, that while Bloomfield Township is experiencing a slight increase in call volume each year,
our serious crimes are growing exponentially, and that takes our officers off the road longer. They’re now investigating more serious crimes, like your breaking and entering, serious crimes that require serious follow-up and crime technicians and things like that, leaving our officers less time on a shift to do proactive traffic enforcement.”
With limited resources and many police departments shorthanded, there just aren’t as many officers available to handle traffic enforcement as there were in the past.
“If you’re shorthanded and you’re going from call to call, you don’t have time to assign people to work in high-crash locations, because they can’t park there and do select enforcement, they have to answer 911 calls, first and foremost, and high-priority calls,” Bouchard explained.
“If you can get back the staffing levels, then you can have selective enforcement assignments without degrading your response capability,” he added. “We have to be able to respond to everything.”
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office has been working hard to fill its vacancies, recently adding a dedicated recruitment specialist whose job is to focus on how to get more people to apply, a more diverse applicant pool, and a broader community to
hear about the opportunities in law enforcement. The Sheriff’s Office, Bouchard explained, has also increased its visits to high schools, and other locations, to expose students and other potential future employees to what a career in law enforcement might look like via cadets.
“We’ve also dropped the age to hire into a number of positions — including in the jail — to 18. You can go into the military at 18, so we have made some changes in our tactics, in terms of broadening our net, if you will, and changing some of the components to what may have been a hurdle to hire,” he said.
In Bloomfield Township, Soley said there seems to be fewer qualified applicants, which, when paired with lateral transfers and an ever-increasing number of retirements, only compounds the problem of employee retention at police departments across the state.
“It’s easy to give a cop-out of, people don’t want to be cops anymore. I teach at our academies, and I don’t think that’s true, because we still have full academies of people going through it. I think we’re just seeing less qualified applicants because there is more opportunity out there.”
Robotics
ics teams at Larson Middle School, Blakely worked with students at Hill Elementary School. In 2017, Blakely, Steve Smitka and Matt Sackrison founded a set of robotics teams under the VexIQ program, and they formed the Troy Robotics Foundation nonprofit in 2019 to help fund students.
Blakely said he believes that not everyone can participate in team sports but that everyone can participate in robotics.
“If robotics existed when I was a kid, I would have been all over it, because sports ‘wasn’t my thing’ either,” he said.
He said that is what compelled him to work with the others to establish a robotics program for kids. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Omegbots will have around 10 students on the team, with the ideal being between eight and 10.
“Most, if not all students have an interest in robotics or some facet of STEM prior to joining,” he said, noting activities such as programming, building things with their hands, or playing video games — the robots use game controllers. He said that “just about every kid has at least one thing they
get excited about.” He said the interest is so strong that the demand exceeds the number of volunteer coaches and mentors.
Nathan Samuel, an Omegabots team member, has been interested in robotics since he was in fifth grade, and it stemmed from his interest in Legos.
“I was always interested in building Legos and participated in Lego League in elementary school,” Samuel said in an email. “I enjoy building things and see how they work. I also like competing with the team.”
In terms of team activities, the tasks can vary as the teams prepare projects for competition.
“In the early stages it’s all about getting familiar with that year’s objectives and designing the various components to perform the tasks necessary to win,” because the game and its challenges change every year, Blakely said. “Once the students have some various designs or concepts, we try to build and test the concepts. Some concepts fail to perform, we document it, and then move on and focus our attention on a new idea until we are all satisfied with the performance of the component. If we need specific parts, we will order them ASAP so that we can complete the build phase.”
For competitions, students prepare
through different drills and matches in order to ensure they have all their bases covered leading up to competitions.
“We have each student try different positions on the team until they find their ideal spot,” Blakely said in an email. “Once everyone has established their roles, we vote to make sure everyone agrees that our team is optimized for success. After that we begin doing timed drills, mimicking the competitions” — like a soccer scrimmage, but with robots, he said.
Robotics competitions can go on for a couple days for different teams, depending on how well the teams perform.
“The competition takes a whole day and is highly competitive. There are referees as well as live scoring and commentary,” Samuel said in an email.
He said each team has three or four people running the robot in each round of competition. “There are usually around 36 teams from different schools. You are competing in partnership with teams that you may have never met before. So you have to work with them to develop a strategy.”
The Omegabots usually perform well, and their most recent season has brought some high recognition.
Blakely said that in the regular season,
they do about average, but in the spring season they placed first.
As the kids grow older and move on to next stages in their school careers many of them continue to express their interest in robotics.
“I would say at least 2/3 of the kids I’ve mentored over the years stick with it all the way through high school,” Blakely said in an email. “The other 1/3 who stop doing robotics, it usually comes down to a few things such as conflicting activities, lack of space on a team, or general shift in interest as the students mature. Regardless of their interest, they have a 100% chance of using the skills they’ve learned in furthering their career, no matter what direction they decide to go. … I would like to see Troy School District take robotics as seriously as they do football, basketball or soccer. If they do that, they would truly be a ‘City of Tomorrow, Today’ focusing on the engineers, scientists, and programmers of tomorrow, today.”
Samuel said he is interested in learning more about robots and potentially exploring a career within the field.
“I would like to build robots that help people in their daily lives,” Samuel said. For more information, visit troy.k12. mi.us/ or visit lmsrobotics.weebly.com.
Ruling
with
10 employees
These sweeping changes will go into effect Feb. 21, 2025. For some, it’s a step toward a living wage for workers. For others, it’s a hit to businesses across the state and possibly tipped workers.
How this happened
This ruling was years in the making. It’s the result of wrangling to keep the issue off the ballot in Michigan by legislators against the changes.
It started with two petitions in 2018 that received the required number of signatures to potentially appear on the ballot.
One petition would have given workers gradual wage increases until the minimum wage became $12 in 2022. After 2022, the wage would be increased each year, as determined by the state, according to inflation. The minimum-wage gap between tipped workers and all other workers, 38% in 2018, would be eventually closed by 2024.
The other petition required employers to give employees one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked per week.
The Legislature adopted the unaltered initiatives in September 2018. This kept them off the ballot and allowed lawmakers to alter them.
They did this in two bills. One caused the minimum wage increases to not exceed $12 until 2030 and removed the increases for tipped workers. It also removed increases
to the wage based on inflation. The second made changes to sick time. It exempted employers with under 50 employees from providing paid sick time. It reduced the amount of paid sick time hours for larger businesses from 72 hours to 40.
The changes, led by Republicans, were approved along party lines by margins of 60-48 in the Michigan House of Representatives and 26-12 in the state Senate in a lame duck session in December 2018. They were signed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder and went into effect March 29, 2019.
In the Michigan Court of Claims, it was determined that the Amended Wage Act and the Amended Earned Sick Time Act were unconstitutional on July 19, 2022. This was reversed by the Michigan Court of Appeals, but was ultimately upheld by Michigan Supreme Court’s July 31, 2024, ruling.
“We hold that this decision to adopt the initiatives and then later amend them in the same legislative session (what has been referred to as ‘adopt-and-amend’) violated the people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to propose and enact laws through the initiative process,” the majority opinion states.
Business owners, associations react
Many business owners and associations have decried the decision.
The Michigan Retailers Association released a statement in the wake of the news.
“Bedrock principles of capitalism and a competitive labor market are thwarted by extending the paid leave law to employers with only one employee, dramatically altering the paid leave requirements for those with 50 or
more employees, and mandating substantial changes to the minimum wage,” the association stated in a press release.
Other organizations including the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Association of Michigan struck a similar tone in press releases.
Marty Knollenberg, Sedona Taphouse/ Knollenberg Hospitality LLC owner, said no one at his restaurant is paid under $12. He does have concerns with the changes to tip credit and earned sick time, and how it could affect the current rise in the cost of living.
“There are a lot of loopholes, and my hope is the Legislature will fix this,” Knollenberg said. “I don’t know what they’re trying to solve, and I wish the union groups pushing for this would ask who’s paying for this.”
He said he feels that his own staff would prefer the current system, specifically in terms of how tips are addressed.
“They like the system we currently have,” Knollenberg said. “Some servers start as hosts and find with their tips they make more money as servers.” Knollenberg said the loopholes should be modified in legislation and that Michigan representatives related to the service industry should be listened to.
Lauryn Tillman, a bartender and server in Macomb County, said she was concerned about people tipping and going out to dinner in the current economy. She said customers may be less likely to tip if the minimum wage for servers gets too high.
“I truly believe that,” Tillman said. “Basically, I rely on my tips to live.”
Chris Johnston, a longtime restaurant owner in Ferndale, saw both sides as to why
people will like the decision and why they won’t.
“Since the pandemic, I think the talent pool has greatly shrank for both front-ofhouse and back-of-house employees in the restaurant business,” he said. “Because of that shrink, to hold on to the talented people that we’ve had and to attract new ones, our minimum wage that we’ve paid has gone up quite a lot. So that increase in minimum wage for back-of-house employees wouldn’t really affect us, because we’re already above that.” He added that most of those employees make around $15 an hour.
Johnston, who owns Woodward Avenue Brewers, The Emory and The Loving Touch, said front-of-house employees haven’t made less than $5 an hour in a long time, so on these fronts, he doesn’t see the changes affecting his businesses much.
“I think that one of the psychological things that may change (is) when customers think that waitstaff is already making a higher wage, they’ll be less inclined to tip,” he said. “I’m sure that will happen. … I think people are using that as an argument against the higher minimum wage, but I don’t know. I think the habit of tipping is a hard one to break and I find that myself, you know, I can’t imagine not tipping, and I can’t imagine someone saying, ‘Well, they’re making enough money.’ Maybe just because I’m in the restaurant business myself that I would never feel that way, I would always just tip and try to help them out, because I know what a tough job it is.”
With more than 20 years in the restaurant business, Johnston said nothing has ever been constant and everything always is changing, such as smoking rules and being
Ruling
able to drink outside in Ferndale.
“It’s a difficult, difficult business, and if you think the sky is falling and everything’s going to end because of one thing, I don’t really think that’s the case,” he said. “I’m an optimist at heart, so I’ll always try to … get through it. But it definitely could be challenging, but there are always ways that you can do things more efficiently to partially make up for it.”
A ‘landmark victory’
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel praised the ruling.
“This is a landmark victory for Michigan voters and a resounding affirmation of the power of direct democracy,” Nessel is quoted as saying in a press release. “The Legislature cannot manipulate its power to undermine the will of the people. This ruling sends a clear message that elected officials cannot disregard the voices of their constituents. I am glad to see the Court recognize and respect that the people reserved for themselves the power of initiative, a crucial tool meant to shape the laws that
govern them.”
The Restaurant Opportunities Center called the day of the ruling “an important day to remember,” calling the decision a win for working families and democracy.
“This ruling is the answer to economic opportunities and job protections that every worker, every voter and every person— Black, white, Latino, Asian, gay and straight, binary and non-binary, Democrat and Republican, immigrants and Native Americans, young and senior—deserves,” Chris White, director, ROC Michigan, is quoted as saying in a statement. “Together with our coalition partners and allies, I am proud of what we have accomplished!”
The Michigan AFL-CIO also commended the ruling.
“We commend the Court for ruling what we all clearly witnessed back in 2018,” Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber said in a press release. “The Republicancontrolled legislature’s flagrant disregard for the citizen initiative process has robbed Michigan workers of wages and sick leave for the past five years. Republicans in the legislature quite literally stole out of the pockets of Michigan workers and today’s ruling by the Supreme Court is the first step in righting this wrong and making workers whole.”
Novi resident Robert Fridenberg purchased his 1972 DeTomaso Pantera three years ago. The 1972 DeTomaso Pantera is painted mandarin copper metallic. Cruising Hines Drive in Wayne County is a favorite spot for Fridenberg.
‘It feels almost like a race car’
BY MARIA ALLARD allard@candgnews.com
METRO DETROIT — In the mid-1990s, the Woodward Dream Cruise in Oakland County was officially established, giving classic car owners the chance to relive the heyday of cruising the avenue in their souped-up vehicles, muscle cars and vintage models.
Novi resident Robert Fridenberg has attended the Dream Cruise many times over the years, but his cruising days began long before — in 1979 — when he and a pal regularly drove up and down Woodward Avenue in his buddy’s “hopped up” 1976 Pontiac Trans Am.
They spent most of their Saturday nights cruising to the tunes of Journey, ELO and the Cars playing on the radio. The young adults — who grew up across the street from each other
Retired Ford engineer says driving Pantera is an event
in Southfield — often stopped at the Northwood Shopping Center at Woodward and 13 Mile Road in Royal Oak.
“It had a huge parking lot,” Fridenberg recalled. “Back in the day, that place was full of hot rodders. That’s where we hung out, met girls and met up with some of our buddies.”
The following year, the duo were back at cruising altitude and that’s how Fridenberg met his future wife, Chris.
Photos by Patricia O’Blenes
Pantera
from page 8A
She knew Fridenberg’s friend first, and when the couple married 33 years ago, he was best man at their wedding.
Three years ago, Fridenberg purchased a 1972 DeTomaso Pantera. He drives it every chance he can. Fridenberg first became familiar with the Pantera as a kid. When he headed to the bus stop each morning for school, he’d walk past a neighbor’s yellowhued model.
Several years back, Fridenberg owned a Porsche 911 Turbo, but after a while he wanted a different car. When looking to replace it, he turned to someone he knew who owned an exotic car consignment business. He hadn’t planned on owning a Pantera but soon changed his mind after spotting the vehicle on the business website.
“When I saw this, it kind of rekindled the memory,” Fridenberg said. “Having worked for Ford, the fact it has a Ford motor in it just kind of got me excited to arrange to buy one. We arranged a swap.”
Fridenberg’s Pantera was originally red, but a previous owner painted it mandarin copper metallic.
“It’s a Ford color. It was used on Mustangs and SUVs in the early 2000s,” Fridenberg said. “This color really makes the car pop. The metallic makes the lines show up more.”
The Pantera has the original body, but because the car sat for so long, Fridenberg did a lot of work to get it road-ready.
“When the Panteras were originally made and developed, the quality wasn’t very good. So over the years a lot of owners had to do upgrades,” he said. “I pretty much had to fix every system on the car. The cooling system had problems with overheating. The horns didn’t work. The windows didn’t go up and down. The seats wouldn’t go back and forth. The brakes had to be rebuilt.”
With his automotive knowledge, Fridenberg was able to overhaul the car. He has also connected with other Pantera owners through clubs online, and has read up a lot on the car’s history. According to his research, the mid-engine sports car was made in Italy as a joint venture with the Ford Motor Co.
“As a retired Ford engineer, I was honored to purchase this car and show it off, as it is a unique part of Ford’s history,” he said. “The design is over 50 years old, but it’s still very modern.”
It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.
He takes it out often, including in the wintertime if the weather is favorable and the roads are dry. It always draws interest at local car shows.
“Bakers of Milford is a big one, and I take it to some of the cars and coffees around here,” the classic car owner said.
But he’d rather drive than sit. One favorite spot is cruising Hines Drive in Wayne County.
“It’s slow, but it’s a nice drive to go on. I usually go up to Newburgh Lake or I’ll go as far as Ann Arbor Trail with it,” he said. “There’s a nice road if you take Seven Mile west, it dead-ends at Whitmore Lake. That road has a lot of nice twisties. It’s a beautiful ride.”
Because the Pantera is so low to the ground, “it feels almost like a race car.” Fridenberg drives it during non-peak traffic times.
“It’s loud, it’s hot, there’s no electronics. It’s more like an event when you go for a drive, because you worry something is going to go wrong,” he said. “It just makes it more of an experience to take it out and drive it. People will pull up next to me. I can see them on their phones. They’ll roll their windows down and say, ‘What is that? Is that a Pantera?’ Everywhere you go someone wants to talk about it.”
0136-exterior paint
Photo by Patricia O’Blenes
Robert Fridenberg likes to take his Pantera out for drives as often as possible. The Pantera’s Ford motor made the car especially attractive to Fridenberg, a retired Ford engineer.
The headliner to close the festival on the Jim Beam National Stage will be R&B star and American Music Award winner Keith Sweat, whose songs include “Nobody” and “Make It Last Forever,” from 7:45 to 9 p.m. Sept. 2.
Other well-known musicians who will be taking the Jim Beam National Stage include rock band Gin Blossoms at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 1 and Detroit’s Queen of the Blues, Thornetta Davis, at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 2.
Maurice Norris, who goes by the stage name Maurice King Wolf, will be a first-time performer at the event, taking the Michigan Lottery R&B Stage from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 1.
Norris has been an entertainer for 14 years, showcasing his talents all over America. He is most well known for his DJing abilities, but he said he is also a singer, specializing in hip-hop, R&B, funk and pop.
At Arts, Beats & Eats, Norris is going to be performing songs accompanied by a DJ and live guitarist. His plan is to create a set list that is molded specifically for the audience.
“I am really good at reading the crowd. A lot of experience in the music business, coming from a DJ, is that you are literally controlling the party, and you have to know the people, and I’m really good at that,” he said.
During the press conference on July 31, a raffle with names of all the artists who wanted a chance to be on the main stage during the 2025 Arts, Beats & Eats event, Norris ended up getting his name pulled.
“I was not expecting that,” he said. “My biggest takeaway from this is to give the people a good experience, and if you see me on Sunday, you will see a good show, one good enough so people remember who I am for next year.”
Along with the hundreds of musical performances across the nine stages, attendees can expect to view art from more than 125 artists from across the nation, according to a press release.
Artists participating will be competing in the Corewell Health Juried Fine Art Show, where a “vast selection of styles and mediums will be represented by these artists who are eligible to win cash rewards,” according to the release.
To satisfy the “eats” part of the title, there will be more than 50 restaurants, caterers and food trucks throughout the festival bringing a diverse menu of options for people to indulge in.
Newcomers to the 2024 event include Royal Oak’s North End Taproom, showcasing unique self-pour taps and scratch menu items. Cafe De Olla is joining the fest as well, bringing authentic Mexican food. Returning favorites include I Freeze Creamery, Drunken Rooster and Princess Mediterranean Grill.
Flagstar Bank is once again partnering with Forgotten Harvest and having a food drive that gives people the chance to get in free to Arts, Beats & Eats.
From Aug. 12 to Aug. 27, people can receive a ticket valid for free entry between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. or a $5 discount for admission anytime to the festival by donating three or more cans of food or nonperishable items at participating Flagstar Bank locations listed on artsbeatseats.com.
Arts, Beats & Eats will open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Aug. 30 through Sept. 1 and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 2. Early bird tickets are being sold for $7 and can be purchased at artsbeatseats.com.
Admission is free before 5 p.m. Aug. 30 and costs $12 after 5 p.m. Every other day, admission costs $10 before 3 p.m. and $12 after 3 p.m. Cash and credit card transactions will be accepted at the gate entrances.
For more information, visit artsbeat seats.com.
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The frequency in severe weather has led to an increase in power outages. More than ever, you need to be prepared. Without power, your everyday modern essentials are rendered useless. Think about it, you’ll have no lights, heating or cooling, or refrigeration. You can’t even charge your cell phone. But when you have a Generac home standby generator, you will have power when you need it the most. It’s time to get serious about preparing your home.
The frequency in severe weather has led to an increase in power outages. More than ever, you need to be prepared. Without power, your everyday modern essentials are rendered useless. Think about it, you’ll have no lights, heating or cooling, or refrigeration. You can’t even charge your cell phone. But when you have a Generac home standby generator, you will have power when you need it the most. It’s time to get serious about preparing your home.
Trusted Protection During Unpredictable Weather
Call or go online today for more information
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The frequency in severe weather has led to an increase in power outages. More than ever, you need to be prepared. Without power, your everyday modern essentials are rendered useless. Think about it, you’ll have no lights, heating or cooling, or refrigeration. You can’t even charge your cell phone. But when you have a Generac home standby generator, you will have power when you need it the most. It’s time to get serious about preparing your home.
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Experience power washing the way it should be done, by ‘Honest Guys’
Whether it’s dirty from the elements or everyday wear and tear, your property’s exterior takes a beating. For your home or business, maintenance is the key to preserving your investment.
When it’s time to clean and freshen up the look of almost anything, Honest Guys Power Washing is the only call you need to make. Owner Dan Taylor and his “guys” handle expert power washing for everything: homes, decks, brick pavers, cement, gutters, siding, industrial buildings, and even construction vehicles.
Dan said decks and brick pavers are their specialty, where they o er a better quality of service than the competition, the materials they use leave a longer lasting finish and the scope of work goes beyond power washing.
“We’ll refinish decks, replacing boards and fixing structural issues,” Dan said. “We fix patios and pavers that are falling apart.
Not only do we li and level and repair the base, we get the moss out of the cracks and put polymeric sand in the joints that prohibits weed growth and prevents moisture penetration.”
The power washing season heats up in mid-April and runs through October, which means now is the perfect time to protect
your property by keeping it clean and performing optimally.
“It’s worth investing in maintenance,” Dan said. “It’s a lot cheaper to maintain something than it is to repair it or replace it.”
Honest Guys o ers competitive pricing with a quality of work that exceeds what the competition o ers. Dan and his team can also quote pricing for new brick installation, add-ons, retaining walls, rock and more.
“We’re the best,” Dan said. “We take care and pride in our work. We use only the best products and our employees are educated technicians with years of experience.”
Honest Guys Power Washing has a new o ce and showroom in Clarkston. For more information or to set up a consultation for a free estimate, visit honestguyspowerwash.com or call (248) 568-7152.
Ask us for a quote on your new brick install,add ons,retaining walls,rock & more!
