Coast Guard City USA may soon have a new Coast Guard boat to mark the entrance to the community. On Tuesday night, Grand Haven City Council approved the authorization of the placement of a new 41-foot aluminum hull boat and the application for eligibility to acquire federal surplus property. "We're trying to get one here where we don't have to pay for it,' City Manager Pat McGinnis said.

Every day of his life, state Senate Majority Floor Leader Arlan Meekhof said he is thankful his birth mother chose adoption rather than having an abortion. That is why Meekhof says he sponsored legislation - along with colleague Sen. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart - that would outlaw partial-birth abortion in Michigan. Senate Bills 160 and 161, which would ban partial-birth abortions, were approved Wednesday by the Michigan Senate.

The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series at Hope College will open its season at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, with the sixth annual Tom Andrews Memorial Reading. It will feature poet Chris Dombrowski and memoirist Mira Bartok, both of whom are former Hope students, in the Knickerbocker Theatre. A performance by a Hope jazz group will precede the reading beginning at 6:30 p.m.

The community is invited to attend open houses at Lake Hills, Mary A. White, Peach Plains and Robinson elementary schools on Thursday. These schools underwent energy and technology improvements this past summer, and this is an opportunity for the community to see the upgrades made through support of the May 2009 bond issues. All open houses will run from 6-7:30 p.m.

Take a look at the scorecard of any of the girls on the Grand Haven varsity golf team and you'll find an occasional 3, some random 4's, and plenty of 5's. But you'll also see a bunch of 7's, some 8's, even a few 9's and 10's. The positive holes give coach Roger Glass a glimmer of hope, but the "blow-up holes,' as Glass calls them, drive the coach crazy.

Host Zeeland, ranked No. 10 in the Division 1 state swim and dive rankings, defeated both Grand Haven and Spring Lake in a tri-meet on Tuesday. Zeeland won 11 of 12 events to help it top the Lakers, 116-68, and the Bucs, 112-72. In their head-to-head matchup, the Bucs prevailed over the Lakers, 117-69. Grand Haven first-year coach Doug Thorne said his very young squad is starting to show tremendous leaps of improvement and it showed Tuesday evening.

Spring Lake secured its seventh consecutive Lakes Eight Conference girls golf championship on Tuesday with a victory at the Tri-County jamboree. Lakers' coach George Bitner thought his league season was complete a week ago, but the Tri-County event was determined to count toward the conference standings, forcing the Lakers to win one more time. That turned out to be no problem, as Spring Lake turned in a team score of 192. Fruitport was a distant second at 229, followed by Tri-County at 235, Fremont at 245 and Ludington at 250.