More police in Detroit? Council says no
With a 7-2 vote, Detroit City Council rejected putting on the ballot a tax hike to raise about $56 million a year.
More taxes, fees? Detroiters pay fortune for abysmal services; council mulls another tax hike
It’s not easy being a taxpayer in Detroit. Property taxes are disproportionately high, yet city services are abysmal. The income tax rate is the highest in the state, but an obscenely high portion of the money is spent paying back debts from years past. And today, as the city and its suburban communities decide at the ballot […]
State does nothing as Historic Highland Park school is gutted by thieves
Part one of a continuing series on abandoned buildings. More than 60,000 vacant buildings are scattered across Detroit and Highland Park, driving down property values and attracting crime, rodents and fires. This is the story of one of those buildings. Neighbors tried their best. They circled the historic, sprawling school in Highland Park to keep out […]
Virtual Tour: State-controlled Highland Park school coming undone
Free Press loses Pulitzer-winning reporter to Fox 2
It’s hard to imagine the Detroit Free Press without M.L. Elrick. Charismatic, dogged and earnest, Elrick is a relentless watchdog driven by an intolerance for corruption. He and reporting partner Jim Schaefer took down the Kwame Kilpatrick administration with a series of stories that showed the then-mayor committed perjury and carried on a torrid affair […]
Tax hike in Detroit? Council considers plan to put police protection on ballot
Detroit City Council declined to vote on whether residents should have the opportunity to vote on raising taxes to put more cops on the streets, saying the police department needs to provide a more thorough plan. Council members said they want to ensure the roughly $56 millon that would be raised from a tax hike […]
Detroit City Council rejects contract because of city’s former ties with KKK
Detroit City Council declined to approve a contract from a Howell-based company today because of the city’s ties with the Ku Klux Klan. “This looks really bad,” Council President Charles Pugh said of the contract. “You can’t have contracts coming from Howell, Mich.” It’s unclear whether council has the legal authority to reject a contract […]
Detroit, Hamtramck consider sharing fire services
Hamtramck and Detroit are exploring a relationship to share fire services at a time when both communities are cutting public safety to fill budget gaps. “The financial realities force us to think outside the box,” Hamtramck City Manager Nervus Nazarko told Detroit City Council this morning. “We would support anything that would make financial sense […]
Sources: Mayor Dave Bing poised to run for re-election, transform city
After much consideration, embattled Mayor Dave Bing plans to run for re-election in an effort to solve the budget crisis, friends and political allies of the mayor told Motor City Muckraker. Michigan officials also have been pressing the mayor privately to run for re-election because he has been relatively supportive of state intervention, according to […]
Media: Be scared of Detroit
Scared yet? If you’re white and live in the suburbs, you’re the target of sensational media accounts of two teens killed in Detroit last week. For the blood-thirsty media hoping to squeeze some pennies from a parent’s worst nightmare, it was the perfect story: Two white teenagers from Westland go missing after visiting a relative […]