For more than a decade, politicians, policy makers and taxpayers too often have framed Michigan urban crisis as a phenomenon limited to the old city poor – Michigan – typically those with populations of African-Americans are great.
It’s been easy for residents and community leaders in nonurban called like Birmingham, Novi or Traverse City to ignore financial disasters besetting cities such as Detroit, Flint and Pontiac. After all, it is not their problem, so why should they care?
But that is their problem-and not only because the health of Michigan’s signature town help drive economic vitality, and pictures of their region and country. This is a matter of everyone because of financial pressures hammering cities like Detroit, including falling property values and cuts in revenue sharing, underestimate the municipality throughout Michigan — large and small, urban and rural, homogeneous and racial variety.
The common denominator is the legacy of his promises–a commitment to pension and health benefits to retirees, bear the economic development initiatives, or to forgo tax revenue–many municipalities no longer have the means, or at least political will, to keep. Lansing policymakers will soon have to consider whether this issue everywhere in statewide solutions require.
News last week that the middle class Allen Park soon to be managed by the State are designated as emergency managers should be a wake-up call for the entire State, prompting gov. Rick Snyder and legislators to re-examine how fiscal policy the country is encouraging municipalities to the brink and threatens to undermine their plans for economic revival.
