From the editor: The Denton Road bridge and other things I know

You may have noticed that The Independent has been keeping a running tally on the bottom of our front page about how long the Denton Road bridge has been closed by Wayne County. As of last week’s paper, it was 1,446 days or just shy of four years.

We’re hoping to remove that feature after this week, because it looks like the bridge will soon be open, maybe by the time this paper lands in readers’ hands.

An interested reader gave our whole office a laugh when he visited just to tell us that the entire Mackinac Bridge, currently the third longest suspension bridge in the world, was built in less time than it has taken to rehabilitate the Denton Road bridge!

The Mackinac Bridge broke ground in May of 1954 and finished in 1958, taking 48 months and about 3,500 workers.

Reader Don Sherman has shared several pictures of the final concrete laying at the intersection of Main Street and Denton and said that, in his experience, concrete takes about a week to cure.

Belleville City Council recently announced that there would be an official ribbon-cutting for the bridge on   Oct. 22.

*

In the last issue, we ran a Q&A with Sumpter Township Police Chief Eric Luke about the police millage on the ballot in November. Our conversation was quite extensive, so I edited it for length. However, there is one topic I wish I’d left in, and it’s this: Even if the township was to shutter the doors of its police department and contract for policing services with Wayne County, that would not be free. And Wayne County doesn’t provide road patrol services to the communities it contracts with.

*

Here’s a correction regarding the story we wrote about the Callahan family and their foster sons being detained by ICE. The foster boys were originally from the Democratic of Congo but had to flee to Angola due to persecution. I’d written that they had flown by airplane from Angola to Brazil, but I got that wrong.

Susan Callahan wrote us an email that said: The boys did not fly from Angola to Brazil – they were stowed in the hull of a 40-foot fishing boat that crossed the Atlantic and landed in Brazil.  They don’t want the reader to think they had resources that didn’t exist and they would like the reader to understand the terrors that people go through to get out of countries where they are being persecuted.

*

And finally, the Belleville Area News Foundation, the nonprofit that runs this newspaper, is seeking additional board members. They’ve gotten a few emails from interested parties, but not as many as we’d like. They would especially like to recruit an attorney for the board but they’re also looking for “at large” members. If you’re interested, see our ad in the paper and send BANF board present Harry Van Gelder an email with your resume and an expression of interest.