Ideas for a City of Greater Detroit

[mwilbert]

Speaking as someone who has attended many a Town Meeting, I like them. They let people express their opinions and can be fairly effective at dealing with specific items like whether to get a new fire engine or whether to approve new zoning for some part of town, and they give more of a sense of connectedness to the town government. But they take up a lot of time--think how many people don't take the time to vote--town meeting takes a long time, even if everything is routing. And they aren't good at allowing people to have input into the actual rules--you can't practically modify a zoning regulation at town meeting, or make significant changes to budgets. It is too hard and takes too long to go over all the details and make sure that they are correct. So you can complain, but you either end up having to pretty much adopt the budget that was submitted, or else reject it entirely. I'm sure that happens sometimes, but not at any town meeting I've been at--it would be a big pain, as they'd have to redo the budget really fast, or else schedule another Town Meeting to approve the revised budget.

Some towns have informal consultations with concerned citizens to try to iron out issues that might be contentious, but that requires even more time and effort on the part of the citizenry.

I don't really see how any of this could work in a large city or a state. I think the mentality goes with the scale of the meeting--you know the other people because they are your neighbors, so you don't just view them as people with horribly wrong ideas.

[canuck]

Speaking as someone who has attended many a Town Meeting, I like them. They let people express their opinions and can be fairly effective at dealing with specific items like whether to get a new fire engine or whether to approve new zoning for some part of town, and they give more of a sense of connectedness to the town government. But they take up a lot of time--think how many people don't take the time to vote--town meeting takes a long time, even if everything is routing. And they aren't good at allowing people to have input into the actual rules--you can't practically modify a zoning regulation at town meeting, or make significant changes to budgets. It is too hard and takes too long to go over all the details and make sure that they are correct. So you can complain, but you either end up having to pretty much adopt the budget that was submitted, or else reject it entirely. I'm sure that happens sometimes, but not at any town meeting I've been at--it would be a big pain, as they'd have to redo the budget really fast, or else schedule another Town Meeting to approve the revised budget.

Some towns have informal consultations with concerned citizens to try to iron out issues that might be contentious, but that requires even more time and effort on the part of the citizenry.

I don't really see how any of this could work in a large city or a state. I think the mentality goes with the scale of the meeting--you know the other people because they are your neighbors, so you don't just view them as people with horribly wrong ideas.

Yes your last paragraph is a good observation and is the spirit of good government in that form I suppose. I also think that the pay scale needs to be looked at in terms of equilibrium. If you allow this kind of selfless valuation in politics, it either means the end of the professional politician or the advent of benevolent circle that needs to somehow be supported without money. Maybe in a state with a million and a half people you have fewer legislative assembly meetings and more time to study a bill between sessions. Maybe 400 representatives can pass a law or amendment faster through cellular group study? For my part, I think a professional appointee needs a decent wage as much as any other city or state employee, white or blue collar.

[Brian1979]

I guess if this was to happen the Pistons would actually play in Detroit without having to build a new arena.

[iheartthed]

Grand Rapids is gonna beat Detroit to the punch:

Proposal to merge Grand Rapids and Kent County governments raises a tsunami of questions

GRAND RAPIDS – When an influential group of business leaders calling themselves the “One Kent Coalition” proposed merging the city of Grand Rapids and Kent County last week, it raised a tsunami of questions from local politicians:

What services would the new entity govern?

How many elected officials would serve on the new governing body?

Would elections be partisan like Kent County or non-partisan like Grand Rapids?

How would services to other cities, townships and villages be affected if Kent County began governing Grand Rapids?

Would it change the city's income tax?

How would it affect Kent County's prestigious credit ratings?

Answers to those questions were absent last Thursday when Nyal Deems, a former East Grand Rapids mayor and spokesman for One Kent, made his pitch to the Kent County Board of Commissioners.

Deems instead focused on the benefits of becoming more competitive in a global marketplace and shedding the balkanized vestiges of a government developed in the 1780s by the Continental Congress.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapi...nd_rapids.html

[NorthEndere]

A Kent County/Grand Rapids merger has been brought up more than once before. I think most every major central city has brought up the question at least once. Kent County is no closer than anywhere else to doing this, though.

[Detroitnerd]

A Kent County/Grand Rapids merger has been brought up more than once before. I think most every major central city has brought up the question at least once. Kent County is no closer than anywhere else to doing this, though.

Well, they're closer in the sense that they don't have the deep divisions we do, right? Grand Rapids and its county get along better than Detroit and its suburbs, yes?