[Merging Metropolitan Services] Why don't other places have to play these games?

[Fnemecek]

Getting really tired of the games.
We're on track for the most murders since the 70's.

You can blame Mayor Bing for both accounts.

Pugh is just unproffesional and condescending.
Brown was all gung ho about funding police. Except when he's not. And a consent agreement where the people's voice is taken away but he doesn't feel it.

How does wanting out expenses to line up with our revenues make Mr. Pugh "unprofessional and condescending"?

As for Mr. Brown, he made sure that DPD had one of the largest budgets in the country on a per resident basis. If the Bing Administration can't provide world-class police protection with that budget, it's time to bring in people who can.

[Fnemecek]

The city council's new budget is about cause shit to hit the fan:

- Debilitating cuts to bus service
- No more People Mover
- Less police coverage
- Less firefighters
- No more sponsored events at Hart Plaza
- No more maintenance of any city parks
- Anorexic allocations to important cultural institutions

What a joke. Even with all of the positive development going on, the city is once again pushing itself off the cliff.

And just think, if Mayor Bing had actually implemented his turnaround plan from two years ago, none of this would have happened.

[mtburb]

And if this stands still, it also means DDOT buses could only run on weekdays in the daylight. This, combined with if there were more no votes than yes votes in last August's SMART millage, there would be no buses running anywhere in metro Detroit on weekends and nights and during the day weekdays, the only places to see buses would be within Detroit!

[cramerro]

Seems to me the CC is more concerned about not having "allowed emergency manager takeover of the city" on thier record now and less about what levels of services are provided to the residents. Just my impressions. I agree with several posters re: Bing... why would he do all of this if it wasn't true? He knows the value of relationships and trust - both are strained during this process.

[Locke09]

I think it is wise for the City to be very conservative in estimating the amount of revenue it will receive in this upcoming fiscal year. Besides, the mayor continues to tell employees that the city is in dire straits and he needs more concessions from them. That supports [[or feeds into) Council's desire to be fiscally conservative.

The mayor can end some less needed services and have the funds reallocated to more important services. He could cut his own budget and reallocate the money to the People Mover and Hart Plaza. He should have added back to the budget the 20 million council said they were willing to add back. That would have covered cuts to Police, Fire and DDOT.

Ensuring that the most important services had their funding restored should have been more important to him than scare tactics.