Tagged: saunteel jenkins

The Detroit City Council wants information from Mayor Dave Bing, and they say issuing a subpoena is the only way to get it.

The Council voted Wednesday to issue the subpoena.

Council member Saunteel Jenkin said it came to this because Bing has ignored repeated requests for documents.

“And this isn’t just [a case of] we asked last week, and we didn’t get it this week,” Jenkins said.

The Detroit City Council is moving ahead to implement the city’s consent agreement with the state.

The Council had delayed appointing its two members to a nine-member financial advisory board while the city’s corporation counsel challenged the consent deal in court.

Detroit’s community access centers are one casualty of the city’s ongoing cost-cutting.

The centers, also known as neighborhood city halls, get no funds in Mayor Dave Bing’s proposed budget.

Their functions—like organizing the annual Angel’s Night and Motor City Makeover campaigns—will be shifted to neighborhood recreation centers.

But Detroit City Council members question how that transition will work without any funding. Bing’s proposed budget eliminates funding for several city departments.

At an open meeting of the financial review team in charge of evaluating the city of Detroit’s finances, protesters on Monday afternoon interrupted the meeting chanting, “No take over.”

The financial review team reaffirmed that a financial emergency does exist in the city and that a consent agreement was their preferred approach to fixing the city’s finances.

The city of Detroit and Michigan have yet to come to an agreement on how to stabilize the city’s finances.