Hamtramck EM Redux

It appears the Mayor wants to request the state to once more establish an EM for Hamtown, this time to deal with a $3 Million deficit. I believe the council has to approve and that is expected.

I guess this is becoming so commonplace that it is drawing yawns, but a $3 million deficit seem like an awfully small amount, even for Hamtramck, to surrender their governance.

I am curious why the Mayor and council can't figure that out via cuts and increased revenues - instead of leaving it to the vagaries of an EM's actions -- who will do just that and who knows what else.

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Originally Posted by Lowell

It appears the Mayor wants requested the state to establish an EM once more for Hamtown, this time to deal with a $3 Million deficit. I believe the council has to approve and that is expected.

I guess this is becoming so commonplace that it is drawing yawns, but a $3 million deficit seem like an awfully small amount, even for Hamtramck, to surrender their governance.

I am curious why the Mayor and council can't figure that out via cuts and increased revenues - instead of leaving it to the vagaries of an EM's actions -- who will do just that and who knows what else.

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Cuts are hard. Hamtramck has huge legacy costs for retirees, protected by contract, law, or politics. If you want to cut retirement, everyone on payroll at city hall will gun for you. Plus, cuts are harder now. The idea is out there that austerity is a bad idea. If you're going to be affected by austerity -- you grab onto this like a bulldog.

Revenues for a small town are very hard to find. What should they do? Increase fees for businesses? Increase the resident payroll tax? Get voters to increase their property tax rate or assessed values?

In Hamtramck, a cap on pension benefits including health care to $60,000 per year would probably reap huge benefits -- but of course that's off the table. Those pesky laws that are protecting pensioners there. As a Hamtramck taxpayer, I'd love to see a list of what is paid out per pensioner.

Hamtramck's pension payment woes, like Detroit and othe aging cities, are compounded by the fact that very few of the pension recipients live in the cities who are paying them. That is the stat I would like to see for Hamtramck.

When I lived in Highland Park 72-99 by the end something like $3 million a year was going out of that colllapsing city to pension funding and no recipients lives there. Most of those generous pensions were doled out when the city was 50,000+ and middle class with a large city staff. Now it is under 15,000, impoverished and with little staff and huge need.

Just another strike against viability where poor cities make Florida prosper.

As a Hamtramck homeowner since last October, I know that the majority of our operating budget goes to public safety. Those guys deserve it. I'm not a huge fan of cops, but the Hamtramck police do have my respect, especially the youthful chief. This EM stuff better not be some Jim Allen-sponsored end run to try to merge Hamtramck services with Detroit, or, worse still, merge municipalities.

Hamtramck should go for a Headlee Override like we did in Ferndale. In our case, voters approved a full 5% increase; however, our leaders did not go the full amount, only around 3 % with the option of raising to the full amount if needed.

Stinks, but what the State has done is withhold monies from the Cities and induced unnecessary crisis's, which then shifts the tax burned to the local level if the citizenry wants to keep their city solvent. I pay a bunch of money in taxes partly because I don't want the State coming into my town and take it away from me.

Yes, there are issues in these cities but the State forced this to occur quicker through cutting of the spigot. It's purposeful action to break up the power center that is Detroit.

In all of this, anyone notice that Grand Rapids is now the 2nd biggest city in the State [[not too long ago it was Warren, I believe). That's a huge shift in power in the State; yet no one wants to talk about that.

Yeah, it's akin to punching a hole in the side of a ship and then usurping the captain because the ship is sinking.

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Originally Posted by Detroitnerd

Yeah, it's akin to punching a hole in the side of a ship and then usurping the captain because the ship is sinking.

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Exactly. Now we get to twirl our fingers in the air trying to figure out what to do, being told that the ends justify the means and to shut up and take it.

Not cool.

If the State was really interested in helping, instead of shift public monies and resources to friendly capitalists, they would have passed legislation that, should a financial situation like this should occur, would blow up the council and mayor offices, require a new election within 90 days while an "EM-type" person ran the city in the mean time. The city has all of the resources to do a chapter 9 on it's own if needed, so this current EM situation is just a new, inventive Republican money suck.

Engler tried to bury the DIA by taking away money from it in the early 90s. Driving the DIA into the abyss would be a great feather in his cap [[oh yes, rest assured that Engler is still involved in all of this ... through his "political action" foundations.