Business Insider
written by Mike "Mish" Shedlock
Monday December 13, 2010
Detroit has been bankrupt for years. It simply refuses to admit it. Detroit's schools are bankrupt as well. A mere 25% of students graduate from high school.
Yet, in spite of hints and threats from mayors and budget commissions, and in spite of common sense talk of bankruptcy, Detroit has not pulled the bankruptcy trigger.
In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing's latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.
Bing to Cede 20% of Detroit to Gangs and Homeless
City officials suggest this will not shrink the size of the city. Perhaps it won't shrink Detroit on Google Maps. However, Bing's plan would effectively surrender 20% of the city to gangs and the homeless.
Would you want to live in one of the gang war-zones that his plan would create? Would you want to live in a bordering neighborhood or in a bordering city?
Regardless of your answer, Bing's plan cannot and will not work and I believe Detroit will, sometime in 2011, file for bankruptcy. If so, expect massive turmoil in municipal bonds.
Less Than a Full-Service City
The Wall Street Journal discusses Bing's plan in Less Than a Full-Service City:
More than 20% of Detroit's 139 square miles could go without key municipal services under a new plan being developed for the city, with as few as seven neighborhoods seen as meriting the city's full resources.
Those details, outlined by Detroit planning officials this week, offer the clearest picture yet of how Mayor Dave Bing intends to execute what has become his signature program: reconfiguring Detroit to reflect its declining population and fiscal health. Yet the blueprint still leaves large legal and financial questions unresolved.
Mr. Bing's staff wants to concentrate Detroit's remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year's Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.
Karla Henderson, a city planning official leading the mayor's campaign, said in an interview Thursday that her staff had deemed just seven to nine sections of Detroit worthy of receiving the city's full resources. She declined to identify the areas, but said the final plan could include a greater number.
"What we have found is that even some of our stronger neighborhoods are at a tipping point with vacancy," Ms. Henderson said. "Vacancy adds to blight and blight is a disease that takes over the whole neighborhood. So the sooner we can get those homes occupied, the better for the city."
Officials bristle when their efforts are described as downsizing, saying their aim is to repurpose portions of the city, not redraw its borders. "We will not be shrinking the city," Ms. Henderson said. "We are 139 [square] miles and we'll stay that way."
Repurpose or Abandon?
Of course the Mayor's office did not say they would abandon sections of the city to gangs. But how the hell can repurposing as described above possibly mean anything else?
What's next? Barbed wire? Oh wait a minute, Detroit already has tried that. Razor-wire too. Here's a picture of Detroit's clearly abandoned repurposed Michigan Central Train Depot.
Please click HERE to read the entire article...
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