Originally Posted by
Novine
"Frankly, part of me is hopeful that having a one-man dictator will be able to cut through all the chaos of our municipal structure."
This seems like wishful thinking. The largest city that's had an EFM was Flint and they're facing EFM Round 2 only a handful of years after EFM Round 1. EFMs can work their magic in places like Ecorse or Benton Harbor because the size of the community and city government is small. They can go through the entire city government and get things where they need to be. Even if they screw it up, no one notices when it happens in a city that size. But Detroit isn't going to be like that. An EFM, even with a great team of people, isn't going to be able to revolutionize Detroit city government. At best, you'll get someone who can get the finances cleaned up a bit and downsize the city until revenues and expenditures are roughly in alignment. But it will be a brutal process for employees and services to residents are probably going to go down as city employees are laid off. The EFM is going to have their every action questioned and challenged. They won't leave behind a new city government, just a shrunken shell of what exists today that will be hard-pressed to deliver the services that it can on the revenues that the city takes after the EFMs work is done.