Quote Originally Posted by bailey View Post
...and also proved that an austerity regime is not a magic bullet. I mean, glowing praise from Bob Berg aside [[isnt that a little like asking Ari Fleischer his opinions of the Bush administration?) that "fiscal responsibility" came with a giant tax increase and a slashing of services. Which just lead to further exodus and further decline in property values, and further decline in services. It also gave us Poletown type corporate giveaways. THEN when none of that worked, the beginning of massive borrowing.

Does CAY deserve ALL the blame? no. However, he was mayor FOR TWENTY FUCKING YEARS. I don't think it's in anyway unfair to lay quite a bit of it at his feet.
It's unfair to lay it at his feet because he did all the things you are supposed to do when your expenditures exceed your revenue: cut costs [[including services if necessary), increased revenue [[one percent hike in taxes that the voters approved), created a rainy day fund [[which still contained millions when he left office) instead of spending every penny he took in. He left the City with a surplus during a bad economy.

He didn't "slash" needed services. For instance, he cut garbage collection costs and improved those services by implementing the Courville containers. He improved DPD and DFD response times with new technology - leading edge at the time. Under CAY, if response time was more than a certain number of minutes, knees were shaking. He got regular reports.

Many don't know that the CAY administration was the first to suggest decreasing Detroit's footprint. People thought he was crazy. He also wanted to increase revenue by expanding the airport, but folks didn't want their buried relatives moved.

Did I mention he left the City with a surplus? So yes, unfair to lay this at his feet.

And speaking of corporate give-aways, how many people are opposing the give-away to Illitch for his new arena?