Tag: Bing

via The Detroit News

Mayor Dave Bing this morning announced a plan to demolish 1,500 dangerous structures within the city in the next 90 days.

The Summer 2012 Demolition Plan is part of Bing's blight elimination and neighborhood stabilization initiative, his office announced in a statement this morning. The plan is to be carried out in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice Youth Violence Prevention Initiative and the Safe Routes to School campaign.

Rest here

Lemme see... why that sorta sounds like the Nerd's DRIC bridge.  No Michigan tax dollars are used by Bing!  Now, if Bing really gave a rip about adding to the crushing Federal Debt, he'd skip the DC trough (I know, I'm dreaming), and delay till fall 'cause with Bing also announcing he's axing one-fifth of his firefighters that would bypass the timing concern as the razing would be taken care of all for free on Devil's Night.

Detroit is in the eye of the storm...

Few government reformers have taken on a more impossible task than Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, who is trying to restore fiscal and functional sanity to the national disgrace that is the Detroit Public Schools. Now, Bobb is being sued by a defiant Detroit School Board determined to protect the status quo that they created and have benefited from.

Kudos to Attorney General Mike Cox, who will defend Bobb against the School Board's retaliatory suit.

Detroit Mayor Bing, meanwhile, is facing a fierce, daily battle with Detroit's unionized city employees, who believe they should be immune from the City's 22% unemployment rate, plummeting population, and evaporating tax base. These unions are more highly compensated than employees in similar cities (according to a Detroit Free Press study), but they won't concede a penny in adjusted benefits or pay.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs...

How are each of you on this magnificent morning?  I woke up with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. (It was the theme song for Perfect Strangers, if you were wondering.)  Toss in the fact that the Tigers play two today against the hated Chicago White Sox complete with a chance to expand the percentage-points division lead and how could anyone complain on a day like today?

Well, I mean, I know HOW folks could complain.  But if that's all you want to do then you're going to have to take that noise somewhere else.  Nobody's brining the rest of us down on a Happy Friday.  Now... to the news!

Let's start in the Ivory Tower, which scored an encouraging exclusive interview with Detroit Mayor Dave Bing.  During their private sit-down Bing announced that he'd seen the light and better, he's ready to act on the Motor City's financial troubles:

After spending most of his first two months in office poring over Detroit's financial books and organizational structure, Bing said the city is so deeply in the red that the following measures must be taken to avoid bankruptcy:

• The consolidation and elimination of some city departments.

• A reduction in nonessential city services.

• Concessions by city employees, including job losses in some cases.

• The hiring of an outside emergency collection agency to help recoup some of the debt owed to the city.

Bonus for Detroiters... not a new tax hike on the list.  Remember, Bing is a Democrat in a 100% Democratic City but he's also a successful businessman who knows exactly what tax increases do to current and potential job makers. The fact that he's looking to plug a $25 million deficit by right-sizing government should be enough to get every Detroiter jumping up and down. Except, maybe, for some of the over-priced bureaucrats whose jobs are suddenly in danger.  (And yes... that counts as happy news, too.)

Bing's apparent leadership on the whole deficit issue looks even sunnier when compared to his Party's leaders in Lansing.  

The Granholm-Cherry administration took precisely the opposite approach yesterday during their own discussions about pools of red ink but even that provided some of the better news conservatives have had in a long, long time!

(There's a bright, shiny silver lining if you read on...)

On the plus side, yesterday saw some decisive action from City Council President (and former Mayor) Ken Cockrel.  After Mrs. Conyers submitted her official resignation he went ahead and began sweeping away the last vestiges of the Democrat's crooked operation, firing Sunceria Garrett, the aunt whom she'd recently given a fat city contract and declining to renew the contracts of four other Conyers staffers.  The Detroit News:

Cockrel said his decision to terminate Garrett wasn't based on her relationship to Conyers, but hinged on cutting the budget.

"Frankly it was an unnecessary position," Cockrel said. "This was not a vacant position. It was filled."

Say what you will about Cockrel, the man has shown a willingness to make some tough personnel decisions (though I suspect these were relatively easy). Before leaving the Mayor's office Cockrel set in motion a budget savings plan that included hundreds of layoffs and reductions in pay for even more of the cities thousands of taxpayer funded bureaucrats.  

Detroit, you'll remember, is currently running a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars while recent gargantuan layoffs in the auto industry have further crippled the tax base (and city "income" projections) for the upcoming fiscal year.  

Alas, the monster financial storm engulfing the city doesn't seem to worry new mayor Dave Bing.  

Read on...

Who'd have ever thunk, for instance, that in the middle of May, well after the emergence of spring and the not-uncommon 70 degree day, with the planet dying and temperatures soaring while the sun turns the surface into a George Foreman grill, melts ice caps and roasts polar bears in their fur, Michigan's LOWER peninsula would suddenly find itself facing a FREEZE warning that threatens to devastate crops.  The Associated Press sounds the alarm!

Summer may be just six weeks away, but the northern half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula faces the threat of a hard freeze that could kill crops and early-season plants.

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning from midnight to 8 a.m. Monday for northwest Lower Michigan and from 2-8 a.m. for northeast Lower Michigan and the Thumb. Frost and subfreezing temperatures are expected in the region lying north of Interstate 96.

Brrrr.  Michigan hasn't gotten that cold a reception since the auto execs asked Congress for federal stimulus funding.  (*RIMSHOT* C'mon... that was awesome, wasn't it?)

Oh, and the bailout cash that they finally did convince the Democrats to funnel into the Motor City?  Too little too late.  

Read on...

But on the other hand, the Wings got robbed last night.  Robbed.  

I know, as I sit in front of the television at 1AM when any of my teams are out west, that I'm going to regret it in the morning but when they actually win it's a great feeling.  A great, currently absent feeling.  A premature whistle?  Are you serious?  Oh well.  It isn't like these are the Stanley Cup Playoffs or anything.

Besides, good times are back in the D again in spite of NHL referees, after voters hit the polls and elected a brand spanking new mayor.  The Detroit News reports that Dave Bing will be the guy steering the Motor City into the future.  

"What we will bring ... is efficiency, transparency, honesty and integrity back to the mayor's office," (said Bing).

Cockrel, who led in the polls, lost to a first-time politician despite the backing of nearly every powerful union in the city and matching Bing in fundraising in a race that cost more than $2 million. He thanked his staff at a banquet hall in southwest Detroit, pledged his support to Bing and conceded at 11:30 p.m.

"You have not seen the last of me," Cockrel said.

He challenged Bing, who moved last fall from Franklin for the race, to get to know the city.

"Hang out with the brothers in front of the liquor store, drinking 40s out of paper bags. .. Get to know that. Get to understand and know the people you'll be representing."

Or, you know... don't.  I'd actually feel a heck of a lot better about the future of Michigan's biggest city if the Mayor weren't on the street drinking 40s out of paper bags.

Read on...

First and foremost, it is an election day.  If you're reading this, the polls are open and you haven't yet, stop everything you're doing and go vote.  There are tax hike proposals in seemingly every city, township and village in the State and far left extremists running for just about every school board seat available anywhere.  

No, seriously, go vote.  We'll wait...

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Back?  What took you so long?  If you're in Detroit we already know it wasn't long lines, so don't try that excuse.  The Detroit News reports this morning that a measly fifteen percent of the registered voters in the D are expected to cast a ballot today to elect the city's next mayor.  Suppose that's what happens when you get a race between a pair of Democrats who are much more alike than they'd have you believe.  Don't give the voters a choice then don't be surprised when they don't bother showing up to make one.  Not even the 200,000 phantoms on the books.  

Meanwhile, an hour and a half to the west, the Granholm-Cherry administration is set today to unveil their sweeping, shocking, devastating, budget-balancing spending cuts.  Except that they aren't sweeping, they certainly aren't shocking, the Dems' core constituency won't be devastated and they don't balance the budget.  

Other than that, though, the administration is pitching a perfect game.

Read on...

Fair warning, before you read the rest of this post you're going to want to sit down.  If you're driving and doing the mobile thing its safer for the rest of us if you pull over to the side of the road.  Shock and highway speeds generally don't mix well.

Safe and secure?

Great.  Check this out.

It looks like most elected Democrats in Lansing, while begging the State Officers Compensation Commission to cut their pay starting in 2011 have and continue to refuse to return any of their pay voluntarily here and now. SURPRISE!

Read on...