Fulfilling our Charter
As we begin a new legislative season, we encourage all Detroiters to read our City Charter. It is a document that expresses the deepest aspirations of our people and provides a standard for judging the effectiveness our public policies.
The Preamble of the Charter makes clear that the aim of government is to address “the needs of all citizens” and affirm “our commitment to the development and welfare of our youth, our most precious treasures; instituting programs, services and activities addressing the needs of our community; fostering an environment and government structure whereby sound public policy objectives and decisions reflect citizen participation and collective desires; pledging that all our officials, elected and appointed, will be held accountable to fulfill the intent of this Charter and hold sacred the public trust.”
The Duggan administration and the majority of the City Council are failing in this most basic mission. They are consistently using money to support greater repression in the city while offering tax reductions to corporate powers.
The Mayor and Police Department have used the real concerns of Detroiters about crime in our neighborhoods to develop a bloated police budget. In the name of fighting crime, the Mayor asked for $388.8 million for the DPD, an increase of $22 million over the 2023 allocations.
Most of this money comes from the general fund used to pay for all city services. This means more than 30% of our entire budget goes to police. But this money has not made us any safer. Much of it goes to contracts for technologies that are more likely to increase the risk of creating situations where police behave in violent, abusive, and often unaccountable ways. Detroit currently spends more than most cities on policing, has more police officers, and has a massive debt, due to the misconduct of officers. Yet we are not any safer.
Over the last few years, the primary program aimed at neighborhood safety, Project Safe Neighborhoods, has as its cornerstone a program judged ineffective by national studies. In essence the police department continues to rely on strategies proven to be ineffective.
Along with the strains on our budget in terms of police expenditures, the money available to the general fund has been restricted by a complicated set of maneuvers called tax captures, tax incentives, or tax abatements. A recent study by a community group has concluded:
“That in the last nine years, Mike Duggan took $442.5 million from our property taxes. When Tax Year 2023 numbers are received and added to this report, it will be clearly over half a billion dollars.
Where did the money go? To millionaire/billionaire investors, mostly for downtown projects. This money was taken from our libraries (over $23 million), our school district (over $148 million), special needs children ($18 million), City government ($148 million, which reduced services and debt payments), parks (over $1.3 million), etc. It is not paid back. When these captures are taken away, they are tied to debt obligations and kept in place for 20-35 years! Please note on the chart how the mayor has tripled these numbers since 2014.
This is money that should go to parks, recreation, music, art, sports, after school support, and youth driven programs and projects.
If we are to live up to our commitment to our young people, we need to radically shift away from policies that overfund the police and provide tax breaks to corporations. We need to invest in the things proven to assist young people in their growth and development. We know that structured activities that enable young people to develop their talents and skills, that offer them ways to contribute to the development of beautiful, joy filled, and productive communities are key to creating fulfilling and vibrant lives for all.