Pushback On The City Council Budget
So, I got an email today from the Detroit city government containing a spiffy Powerpoint encapsulating the Mayor's response to the City Council's proposed budget cuts. The most important thing I see is that to save roughly $28 million (apparently beyond $20 Bing claimed he and the council agreed on at the Mackinac conference), the cuts are likely to disqualify the city from $106 million in federal funding, at least some of which has already been spent and would have to be repaid. The rest of it's a touch hard to parse, as it doesn't note how many of the services it lists as shutting down are explicit in the council's cuts and how much is the mayor's office's judgement as to what the cuts will entail. Given what I've seen from inside a couple of public institutions, plus the fact that forgetting about federal dollars seems to be typical in poorly thought out budget cutting, I'm inclined to give Bing the benefit of the doubt.
So, taking the Powerpoint at face value, the cuts will result in the closure of Hart Plaza as of July 1, the beach and restrooms at Belle Isle, and the People Mover, in addition to the fire and police layoffs. All in all, it's pretty nasty...
Categories: Blog, GreatRecession, Politics