Tagged: Dave Bing

The Detroit City Council will press a challenge to Governor Snyder’s decision appointing an emergency financial manager—but they’ll do so without Mayor Dave Bing’s support.

The Council voted to approve that challenge Wednesday afternoon. Bing then held a late afternoon press conference declaring his opposition to the Council's tactics.

“I tried to figure out a way to support the Council in their efforts to appeal the Governor’s decision and to challenge the Financial Review Team’s assertion that we did not have a plan in place to fiscally stabilize the City,” Bing told reporters.

Gov. Rick Snyder's office just put out a news release saying the Governor will hold a "forum with invited Detroiters to discuss Detroit's financial situation."

It will be held at tomorrow at noon at the Detroit Public Television studios, 5057 Woodward Ave. in Detroit.

A live stream will be available as well.

It's widely expected that Gov. Snyder will appoint an emergency manager for the city.

Earlier today, the Detroit Free Press reported that Mayor Dave Bing said he doesn't expect Snyder to offer a name tomorrow:

Last night, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing reaffirmed the city’s financial troubles, outlined some of the ways his administration has worked to cut costs and still maintain basic city services and introduced programs to demolish the Brewster projects and establish a Detroit Blight Authority.

The Mayor said the story of Detroit is not all doom and gloom and quote, "we can’t – we won’t give up on our city," he said.

Mayor Bing joined us today.

And we talked with Michigan Radio's Detroit reporter Sarah Cwiek about Bing and his speech.

Take a listen to our conversation with him above.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s state of the city speech last night didn’t focus a whole lot on the city’s financial problems.

Instead, Mayor Bing talked a lot about slow but steady progress on some of his administration’s big goals.

He started by briefly addressing the city’s grim finances, and laid some of the blame at Lansing's feet.

“The total amount of cutbacks in state revenue sharing to Detroit over the past 11 years is more than $700 million,” said Bing.

Bing says this has forced him to make some difficult and unpopular decisions, but he says the city has made progress cutting costs, combating blight and bringing in new development.

“While we can proudly point to all these successes, my job is not done. And neither is yours,” he said.

While he says there’s more to accomplish, Bing still won’t say whether he'll run for re-election in November.

During the speech, he focused on some of his big policy initiatives, and on his success in getting the private sector onboard with those ideas.

He announced a new initiative in the speech.

“Bill Pulte, of Pulte homes, one of this nation’s largest home-builders, has created a private, non-profit group called the Detroit Blight Authority. The group is working with my office to eliminate blight,” said Bing.

Bing says he’s also taken steps to address Detroit’s persistent crime problems.

He says the police chief will launch a new collaborative program this month to crack down on gun crimes.

You can watch the speech online here:

Volunteer groups in Detroit are still absorbing news that the city will stop maintaining about 50 parks in the spring.

It’s especially upsetting for the many neighborhood and volunteer groups that already work hard to help maintain those parks throughout the year.

A group of former Wayne State University law students make up the 313 Project. They semi-adopted Romanowski Park in southwest Detroit last summer for a “Motion to Makeover” last summer.

Director Aisa Berg says the group marshaled volunteers and nearly $30,000 to invest in upgrading the park. They installed trash cans, bike racks, picnic tables, and helped board and clean up houses surrounding the park

Since the makeover, Berg says she’s heard lots of positive feedback about improvements in the area. “It’s been great just driving around the park, seeing the park being used, whole families coming to the park to barbecue,” Berg says.

Romanowski is one of the parks the city plans to stop maintaining in the spring. But Berg says the group will stick with the park because they’ve “come too far to go back.” But she calls the planned closure “a shame.”

“In a lot of ways, it seems that the city has turned its back on these efforts,” Berg says. She says it would be “wonderful” if the group could develop a more formal relationship with the city to maintain the park.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced the park closures last week, after the Detroit City Council effectively rejected a deal that would have made Belle Isle into a state park.

Bing says that deal would have saved the city $6 million that they had counted on to invest in other parks and rec centers. But since that’s no longer possible, they’re being forced to close parks, and maintain others less frequently.

That includes parts of Rouge Park, Detroit’s largest park at nearly 1200 acres on its far west side. Part of the park will be closed, while another portion will be maintained regularly as a so-called “premier” city park.

That’s upsetting news to the Friends of Rouge Park, a group that’s worked to protect and restore the park since 2002.

Sally Petrella is the group’s President. She says they’ve been working on a master plan for the park—and have been trying to leverage that to get additional money.

“Which is part of what makes us really disappointed to hear that the mayor wants to shut down the park,” Petrella said. “It really puts a damper on efforts like that, where we’re actually working to bring more money to the park.”

Petrella says the park is too large for a volunteer group to maintain on their own—there needs to be at least some small budget allocation just to cut the grass.

Still, Petrella is hopeful they can reach some kind of deal to keep the whole park open.

“We need to come together and say these parks are important,” Petrella said. Like we did with the zoo, like we did with the DIA.

“These are resources, assets that we all benefit from, but we need to find a way to foot the bill.”

Detroit firefighters have won the right to subpoena and depose top members of Mayor Dave Bing’s administration.

The firefighters union is suing the city. They say that decisions to close firehouses have jeopardized public safety in violation of the city charter and national fire protection standards—and have left targeted areas of the city virtually without adequate service.

Detroit Firefighters Association President Dan McNamara says they’re “looking for the decision-makers,” and they want them under oath.