State offers to help fix lights, demolish buildings... (Detroit)

[LMich]

Read this whole thing. Some pretty interesting and helpful ideas that will get you thinking "why didn't they do this earlier?"

State offers to help fix lights, demolish buildings -- but more money isn't guaranteed

By M.L. Elrick, Chastity Pratt Dawsey and John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

March 30, 2012

One portion of the financial stability agreement highlights the state's ongoing efforts to help the city, as well as a few initiatives that appear to be new.

But it contains few, if any, promises of additional funds for Detroit.

Many of the activities cited stress the state's efforts to work with the city and other entities to improve city services, schools, transportation, economic development and collection of taxes.

For example, the state says it will help improve street lighting by helping the city create an authority that can get its own bonds. Separating the authority from the city's general-fund budget will "make financing more attractive to bondholders and thus lower the overall cost of the upgrades," the state said.

The state also said it would help the city streamline and accelerate the process for demolishing abandoned buildings, as well as evaluate the redevelopment potential for state-owned land in the city.

Touching on an issue that has long vexed Detroiters, the state said it would reduce auto insurance rates through the Michigan Automobile Insurance Placement Facility, "creating a base rate that reflects a more neutral score, resulting in noticeable rate reductions."

In addition to its efforts to help reform Detroit Public Schools and improve failing schools, the state said it will move Department of Human Services specialists out of county offices and into 50 Detroit elementary schools.

"This will help eligible families access resources immediately, before barriers such as transportation, child care, housing instability, food insecurity and access to health care impede a child's learning process," the state document said.

Transportation initiatives that the state touted include building a new international bridge, expanding a city freight terminal, creating a regional transit authority and creating a commuter-rail station on the old state fairgrounds. The state also said it would start construction this summer on a rail project that will relieve congestion for freight trains and shorten travel times for passenger trains while helping "lay the groundwork for future commuter-rail service between Ann Arbor and Detroit."

...

Some of these plans would have near instant quality of life improvements such as the lowering of auto rates in the city.

[Cleveland Brown]

It's great news and really shows that the state is willing to help Detroit instead of just issuing edicts on high. I'm guardedly hopeful that this crisis will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and shows Detroit that it can't keep doing things just because its always been done in a certain way.

[Rizzo]

I'm curious how they plan to "streamline" demolition of buildings. How does one do that?

Even with fast-tracked permits and approvals, you're still doing windshield surveys and documentation, engineering inspections, and dispatching salvage crews prior to demo. What they really need to do is increase staffing to process a larger number of properties. When they say streamline, they imply the existing system is inefficient. In what way? For almost close to a decade now, vacant property management has increasingly been delegated to the state....so yeah...to state the obvious you're helping cities.

[LMich]

Originally Posted by Cleveland Brown

It's great news and really shows that the state is willing to help Detroit instead of just issuing edicts on high.

I am hardly ready to believe this is the case. I'm really skeptical of this, and I'm sure most Detroiters are; this simply sounds like a way to get them to sign the consent agreement (that they'll sign anyway). But, if even half of this is true, it would be HUGE for everyday quality of life in the city.

That said, anything requiring actual additional money is DOA given that it'd have to go through the legislature, and I've literally read half-a-dozen articles in the News and Freep the last few days in which the committee chairmen that control the purse strings have balked at any money for the financial stabilization plan. I'm hoping Synder isn't promising more than he can actually provide. He get get the technical help out of the various department, tomorrow, but anything that requires legislative oversight ain't gonna happen.