Good news: Flint's books are balanced!
Bad news: Flint is almost at the point where it can no longer function as a city, according to the EM.
Quote:
That’s the assessment of Edward Kurtz, its emergency manager. Without reliable revenue to replace dwindling property and income taxes and state funding, the birthplace ofGeneral Motors Co. [[GM) won’t be able to support its citizens, even if its books are square, Kurtz said.
As state-appointed overseer Kevyn Orr takes control of near-bankrupt Detroit [[9845MF), the experience of Flint shows spending can be made to match revenue. Yet merely making the numbers work may not be enough in cities where population and revenue shriveled with the closing of auto plants.
“How many more employees can we lay off and still provide the basic services?” Kurtz asked in an interview in his office at Flint City Hall. “We can’t just keep putting it on the backs of the people who live in the city. Pretty soon, we won’t have anybody left to tax.”
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Still, Kurtz wrote in a Feb. 8 report to state Treasurer Andy Dillon that Flint “is approaching the point of diminishing returns” and that “stable revenue is necessary in order for this city, and most other cities in Michigan, to continue to avoid a bankruptcy situation.”
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Emergency managers can’t fix such deep-rooted dysfunction without changing state and federal policies for funding cities, said U.S. Representative Dan Kildee, a Flint native who co- founded the Center for Community Progress, a Washington-based advocate for land reuse and urban revitalization.
“If we don’t have the will to do those things, then all the strong managers in the world will not pull America’s weakest cities out of their decline,” said Kildee, 54, a first-term Democrat.
Flint is among six Michigan cities that have emergency managers, including Detroit, where Republican Governor Rick Snyder named Orr on March 14. While elected mayors and councils remain, the fiscal overseers have ultimate authority to operate and restructure, sell assets and alter union contracts.
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This is Flint’s second time around.
Kurtz, a 70-year-old former president of the Baker College system, which is based there, was appointed in 2002 when the city had a $35 million deficit. It had a balanced budget when he left in 2004, yet started running deficits again three years later.
Snyder named a new manager in November 2011, and when he couldn’t continue, Kurtz came out of retirement in August.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...zens-need.html
