This is one departure that is long overdue.
After getting a run-around of one kind or another over the past 10 years or so, Traverse City has finally declared a collection of old rail cars a public nuisance and gone to court to get them moved.
For the folks who live near the Lake Avenue railroad graveyard, it was a welcome action indeed. For years the rail cars have been magnets for the homeless and for transients and have nothing to boost property values or neighborhood ambiance.
As the city said, a nuisance.
Dan Hill, the city's code enforcement officer, had tried over the years to get the cars moved and fix up the area, and some of those efforts ended with a rail car being sent elsewhere.
But Hill and the city were caught in the seemingly never-ending round of deals and sales and broken deals that are part and parcel of the railroad car business. The ownership of some rail cars at the site changed frequently and cars were sometimes moved from private land to railroad property.
Given the situation, taking owners to court was a necessary next step. The city now has to keep control over the site, including monitoring any new rail cars that show up and what the plans for them are.
And while they're at it (as a Record-Eagle reader has suggested), city code enforcement officials might want to get busy at the corner of Front and Division streets, where a couple empty buildings and cross-corner vacant lots have turned a major entrance to downtown into an eyesore.
Like the rail car graveyard, it's time something is made to happen there, too.
It shouldn't be this hard. Last year, Traverse City school officials backed off a proposal to require every senior's official yearbook photo to look pretty much like every other senior's official yearbook photo.
The aim was to bring some order to the process. There was also concern that students who couldn't afford a studio shot wouldn't be represented.
But some administrators apparently misunderstood orders to stick to the old policy. Superintendent James Feil said there were "differing interpretations about what was considered a vertical portrait."
Good grief.
It should be simple. Seniors should be allowed some leeway in how they pose as long as their photos meet broad guidelines: no T-shirts, no baseball caps, no profane logos, etc. The district should offer to take pictures of students who don't want to provide their own.
A new policy (in the works) must provide plenty of leeway for kids to look and pose as they choose, within reason. This isn't cloning.
