it's a pretty fucked up situation b/c the state actually owes the city like $200mil (so far, the tax sharing should have been paid each year, which would plug detroit's deficit) in backtaxes over a tax-sharing agreement that the governor has refused to honour. since, much like the feds > the states, the states > the cities and there's fuck all detroit can do about it. what are they going to do, sue the people who make the laws? lmao
as it stands the real issue is that all of the people with actual cash have moved out of the city's boundaries and into nicer neighbourhoods like grosse point (typical houses are like 5-6 bedrooms, >$1.5mil and just 20 miles away from downtown detroit), royal oak, troy, etc. these people commute into the city every day and use its services but they don't pay any of the taxes the city actually needs to run the rest of the city outside downtown... and detroit is fucking enormous
essentially they need to do 1 of 2 things:
a) annex the rich communities into the city of detroit and make them contribute their fair share to the city which they leech off of
- this would be very unpopular (obv)
- it's questionable whether or not detroit city council is even capable of running what they have at the moment in terms of sheer managerial capacity
- this also means that they have to provide services to an even larger area than already, could be costly but hopefully the increase in revenue would make up for it
b) drastically cut the area that they're servicing down. this means no fire engines, no police, no road repairs, nothing - to huge huge chunks of the city. this is a pretty terrible idea as people still live out there and it's basically saying (more so than usually, because detroit is terrible (58mins avg response time to a 911 call)) that anyone outside the greatly decreased catchment area of the city lives in a lawless zone and are free prey to rape, murder, burglarise etc
- fucking terrible morally
- may not even work considering how services have already been cut and the amount of debt that detroit still has
- i guess you could also eminent domain to seize still occupied houses in the excluded zones and a similar number in the non-excluded zones then move people there but iirc you have to pay a reasonable market value and even with loldetroitprices i doubt the city could afford it
there are probably some other options but the basic point is that the poor of detroit actually carry most of the tax burden. companies and richer people either avoid or make deals with the city to mitigate it (my company persuaded the city council to give them a tax waiver worth $20mil to build their hq there. what the fuck detroit ur broke already jesus).
however given how the rest of the state fucking hates detroit and how politically unlikely it is that the rich will ever be taxed, i'm basically expecting them to literally laugh in the face of olds as they tear up and burn pension agreements while paying out millions to bond holders because :lolmerica:
