A few reasons... City of Detroit financial shape

[48302]

You better believe that Bing has gone in to the Mayor's office and done his redecorating at taxpayer expense.

proof>

dont throw around rumors without proof

[mwilbert]

There are at least two kinds of waste. One is just spending money on foolish stuff. The other trying to do useful things but in an inefficient way. I'm sure the city spends some money on foolish stuff; it has been documented, and you can cut that out quickly if you can get people to agree that the activity itself is needless. However most of the cost of inefficiency is spread throughout the whole organization, in all its operations. Over time, you could probably make the city substantially more efficient by improving management, changing work rules, and generally tightening the ship.

The problem is that you can't possibly do that in the next few months; it would probably take 5-10 years, assuming you had administrations throughout that time that made it their main priority. And even if you did, you would have to cut jobs anyway; it would just mean a smaller reduction in services. But since there isn't time to do that, all you can do is cut services and the people who provide them, or cut the pay of the people who provide the services. Given the depth of the problem, probably both.

That stinks for city workers, toward whom I have no ill will, but you can't get blood from a turnip. It doesn't matter how much you need a transfusion.