Tagged: ecorse

The city of Flint now has a plan to fix its ‘financial crisis’. But the plan has several major hurdles to overcome.   

Emergency Manager Mike Brown’s 10-page plan outlines Flint’s deteriorating financial condition: An $11 million  budget deficit this year, long term declines in population, and an eroding tax base. 

The plan also charts a course out of the ‘financial crisis’ the governor declared last year. It calls for restructuring collective bargaining agreements with city unions and merging or eliminating some city departments.   

The plan also calls for improving public safety in the city, which has seen four homicides this year and more than 120 murders during the last two years.   

Emergency Manager Mike Brown calls the plan ”a work in progress”.  He says implementing it will be a “most difficult challenge.”  

Mayor Dayne Walling called on residents to “do their part to address Flint's long-standing challenges."  

Flint is one of four Michigan cities being run by emergency managers.  The city of Detroit may soon be added to that list.  

Ecorse has received $40,000 in private grants to help the city develop a master plan for its future. The city is under state control because of its deficit. Partners like the Michigan Municipal League, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, and C.S. Mott Foundation are investing in the project called Envision Ecorse.

Joyce Parker is the emergency manager for Ecorse.  

"Part of what we would like to do is, as we move forward towards eliminating the deficit and getting the city stabilized, to work with elected officials and the community to sustain that success."

Parker says some of the money will help develop a plan for the city’s greenways. The planning project could serve as a model for other cities under emergency managers.

As Micawber said in the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

The city of Ecorse ran into misery when it spent more than it was taking in.

An emergency manager appointed to oversee Ecorse's finances in late 2009 found the city was overspending. To make up for the overspending the city spent $2.4 million in revenues collected from the Ecorse Public Schools, and $4.2 million collected on behalf of Wayne County.

In 2010, a judge told the city that the money had to be repaid - a prospect that would have forced the city to raise taxes significantly and "devastated the local economy," according to Governor Snyder's office.

Now, Governor Snyder has signed legislation which supports the city in its plan to sell bonds to pay off the debt overtime.

In a press release, the Governor said:

“Ecorse didn’t get into financial trouble overnight.  Trying to undo years of mismanagement in one fell swoop would create an overwhelming burden on city residents and businesses that are already struggling,” Snyder said.  “The goal is to get Ecorse back into financial health in a responsible way.”

The Governor's office said the city could have issued bonds without state approval, but the new legislation "gives greater assurance of repayment to those who will purchase Ecorse’s bond debt."