Bing says rebuilding Detroit is 20-year task

[Lorax]

In a system that wasn't broken, your property taxes should not be more than 700 bucks per year.

Detroit has serious issues with taxation, and if these properties are to survive, they need to all be evaluated from a new standard.

If they choose not to do this, then I would support neighborhoods such as EEV, Indian Village, Palmer Woods, University District, etc, splitting off and establishing their own cities.

There is no excuse for not doing something proactive in Detroit, it's years late in coming, and in order to preserve the built environment, new municipalities may need to be established.

[Fnemecek]

Detroit has serious issues with taxation, and if these properties are to survive, they need to all be evaluated from a new standard.

If they choose not to do this, then I would support neighborhoods such as EEV, Indian Village, Palmer Woods, University District, etc, splitting off and establishing their own cities.

It's not just the taxes. It's the combination of high taxes + low public services.

If we don't start seeing some progress made soon, I could easily see everything west of Greenfield saying good-bye to Bingland. Lower taxes. Better services. What's not to like about that?

[Lorax]

I would say to "right-size" Detroit, the new city boundaries should be from the river to Grand Blvd, and everything south of that forming the new boundaries. Basically returning to Detroit's 19th century expansion to the limits of Grand Blvd.

This would render everything north of Grand Blvd separate municipialities, including New Center, Virginia Park, Boston-Edison/Arden Park, Highland Park, Palmer Park/Woods. Traditional neighborhood boundaries west and east would also be recongized and allowed to secede from Detroit.

This is where a regional police, fire, park, transporation, and library systems would come into play. Wayne, Oakland & Macomb counties would share in these services, paid through taxation as a separate line item over and above municipal taxation which would take care of services like water/sewer, garbage collection, road repair, etc.

This would consolidate duplicitous services so each municipality would not have to establish it's own set of separate services. They could however opt to do so if they feel their level of taxation could support it- "The City of Palmer Woods" as an example could encompass everything between McNichols and 8 mile/Woodard to Greenfield, and may be able to support it's own city services without having to opt-in to sharing them with the region.

This would keep those communities who currently have their own services from having to give them up to a regional authority such as the Grosse Pointes, Clinton Twp, St. Clair Shores, Southfield, etc.

Similarly, municipalities could opt-in to some services, and opt out of others, as their tax bases will allow, making it organic in nature.

Certainly to begin with, the park systems, water/sewer, roads, libraries, transportation, could be regionalized as tri-county authorities.

Fire, police, schools could be locally run if taxes are sufficient to do so, if not, they could fall under regional authority as well.

Possibilites are endless, and food for thought.

[Trainman]

In a system that wasn't broken, your property taxes should not be more than 700 bucks per year.

Detroit has serious issues with taxation, and if these properties are to survive, they need to all be evaluated from a new standard.

If they choose not to do this, then I would support neighborhoods such as EEV, Indian Village, Palmer Woods, University District, etc, splitting off and establishing their own cities.

There is no excuse for not doing something proactive in Detroit, it's years late in coming, and in order to preserve the built environment, new municipalities may need to be established.

Since Lansing does not care about Detroit and Livonia, maybe we should make our own state and call it Southeast Michigan to include Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties?

Then we can have a regional sales tax to eiliminate the $70 Million dollars from the general fund from Detroit for DDOT and then replace both city and state funds with this NEW tax that will generate $300 Million per year. We could do the same for other government services such as we did with the NEW zoo tax that Detroit used to pay.

The problem is that Lanising wants our taxes but they will not pay for Detroit or Livonia which is why they both now have slums. So, then we are stuck with taxes on top of NEW taxes, unless we actually succeed from Michigan and maybe the U.S.A. with our NEW president trying to raise NEW taxes.

And why not, we have Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina.

So, why not Southeast Michigan?