News Blawg

Reinventing Detroit: An earful for Mayor Bing

September 17, 2010
By

Mayor Dave Bing wants suggestions for what to include in a new plan — the Detroit Works Project — to reinvent the city, and he’s asking people for ideas. But you have to pity the city staffers who are sorting through the responses that gushed from the crowd of hundreds Thursday evening at American Serbian Memorial Hall on the city’s east side in the second of five slated forums. Another is set for over the weekend and two more next week.

For example, when a speaker said police should ticket trash dumpers instead of speeders, they wrote down “increased enforcement of blight” on easel-mounted notepads.

When a speaker asked where money for any projects would come from, meeting leader Karla Henderson, the city’s group executive of planning and facilities, discussed federal monies that could be available.

When a speaker complained that residents in the past had been involved in community revitalization strategies that went nowhere, Henderson said representatives from different city departments — police, fire, trash collection, public works — were also helping develop this plan. “The people who actually have to do the work are at the table,” she said. “At every step of this planning process we have our eye on implementation.”

Mainly speakers wanted to give Bing and the other administrators on hand an earful about what’s wrong with the city now.

Bing and several other city administrators stressed at the Sept. 16 forum that there is no plan now, and the current forums are just one part of helping Bing and a 55-member advisory panel develop  a “roadmap of the future” to guide housing, investment and development decisions to make Detroit’s 139-square miles economically viable, safe and sustainable. It’s expected that there will ultimately be dozens of meetings over an 18-month planning process.

“I’m impressed that so many people are getting engaged,” Bing said when it was all over. “I think we get engaged for a lot of reasons. Some people are angry, I understand that. Some people are frustrated. I understand that. And then we’ve got a lot of people that are here because they’re concerned and want to help. They want a part of what this city will look like.”

And they know a lot about what they don’t want Detroit  to look like.

First in a series on the city of Detroit’s effort to forge a new future.

Listening and listing at the community forum Sept. 16.

  • Butchie Yost

    Why even ask the citizens to chime in ?

    All you’re going to get are gripes about lack of free alcohol, and lack of free money, if you’re lucky you might get a compliment on the velvet neon tie.

  • Eastpointe Eddie

    It’s a shame we have let the infastucture fall apart, Blight and Poverty go hand in hand. First 1 lawn isn’t mown then it spreads just like a cancer

  • lyrids

    The infrastructure fell apart because of the lack of jobs in Detroit proper. No municipality, regardless of it’s citizenry can continue to spend money as it once did. Due to this of course several serious problems occur and where there is a lack of money, these problems are less likely to be solved. The city needs to cut it’s staff by at least a third, at least that many jobs could now be done with computers. Thereby saving the city money and seriously shaping up the personnel who remain.