Quote Originally Posted by sehender1 View Post
Detroitnerd: You totally missed most of my point, but let's not get stuck there.

Tell me: What's YOUR solution to the city's probable half-billion dollar cumulative deficit by June 30, combined with precipitously falling revenues and no obvious source of new cash?

That's the challenge here..
I think it might have been a good idea to listen to what Joe Harris had to say EIGHT YEARS AGO. Back then, he found that the city could save $60 million a year. He gave his recommendations to the Kwamster, and only $6 million of the cuts were implemented. We've known about this for a very long time.

But, see, nobody really wants to do the hard work of finding out where to make some cuts. They just want to let the disaster continue so they can use it to campaign for THEIR idea, whether that's selling the water system, privatizing the schools, allowing development on Belle Isle, etc.

So what's the solution? I think it's pretty simple. Draw a line around Detroit, starting in Mount Clemens, arcing over Rochester, descending through White Lake and Commerce and Novi, falling through Plymouth, Canton and Belleville, slipping around Romulus, Brownstown and Trenton and including Grosse Ile. And let's make that all one government: Detroit. You will see fat cat politicians kicked out of office faster than Kwame Kilpatrick spends a public dollar, and suddenly folks in Detroit and Drayton Plains will not feel so smug about whose problem it is and who's to blame. Then we could enact some sensible revenue-sharing and pay off all our debts with the money we could save by not having two or three dozen school systems, police forces, fire departments and the like.

Does it sound ridiculous? Never gonna happen? This is precisely what happened in Boston and New York 100 years ago, and, more recently, Anchorage, Alaska.